Into the Smoke
by AofX
Summary: Suzuki Shou disturbs a butterfly; Uzumaki Naruto reaps the benefit. Mitarashi Anko didn't think she was cut out for teaching, but to be a ninja was to be forever enrolled in a game of give and take, and when the Hokage asks you to give, you don't say no. Gen fic. Teacher!Anko.
1. Prologue

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Suzuki Shou disturbs a butterfly. Naruto gets a slightly different team.

Notes: Heavily features three OCs. Basically, what would happen if Naruto had supportive teammates from the start, and if Sasuke wasn't a major facet of his storyline.

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Prologue

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"It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world." –Chaos Theory

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Suzuki Shou kept his eyes closed and his breathing deep, even as he became hyper-focused on his surroundings.

He could tell that it was early morning, but the lack of light shining through his eyelids meant it was before sunrise. Next to him he could hear his wife snoring, the sound familiar after almost thirteen years of marriage. He shifted his attention to his chakra sense, easily picking out the gentle hum of his daughter's chakra. He extended his senses further, feeling the telltale thrum of the property's protective seals. Aside from his family, there was no one in the house.

There was a tapping at the window, the unmistakable sound of talons against glass—a messenger hawk.

'_I'm getting good,_' he thought, trying to be positive. '_Knew that bird was coming even before it showed up. They may as well start calling me Oracle._'

The joking didn't make him feel better. It was way too early to deal with shinobi bullshit, ANBU or otherwise. The sun wasn't even up yet!

Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time he'd been summoned at such an hour, and it wasn't likely to be the last.

'_Maybe Inoichi and Mei had the right idea. I could retire to help Hisako open a storefront, and then sleep till noon every day..._'

But, no. He was a shinobi through and through. Any other job would drive him mad, because Shou was the kind of man who wanted to know things. The civilian life, peaceful though it may be, was a life of ignorance.

Also, civilians didn't typically get to blow things up.

Shou lived for cool explosions.

He rolled out of bed, taking care not to disturb his wife. He moved with the silent grace of a seasoned shinobi, never once causing the wood flooring to creek. He removed the message from the bird's leg, letting it take off once more. The message was guarded with a blood seal, so he sliced the outside of his thumb with one of the senbon he kept hidden on him at all times.

The message—written in standard ANBU code—was unsigned, but he could tell it was written by Raccoon because it read something like: 'Good morning, you fantastic stud of a man. We finally got the chick Gai brought in to talk, and let me tell you, this is one hell of a mess. The transcript is on your desk. Report in ASAP, this shit is crazy.'

Which, on one hand, was fantastic news, but on the other, was absolutely terrible.

The woman that Gai brought in was part of a group of missing nin that ANBU had been after for a while. No one was sure what their motive was, but they had been hunting down genin teams and massacring them. It had been kept under the radar, since the Hokage hadn't wanted a panic, but all of the higher level shinobi had been after these guys. They would've been caught faster, but one of the members seemed to have great skill in masking the presence of the entire group, so they'd been at a standstill until the group decided to go after Maito Gai's team, expecting an easy take down, but the woman they sent hadn't gotten anywhere near the genin before Gai had her seeing stars.

Since then, T&amp;I had been having a hell of a time trying to get her to break—no one was sure whether the group was isolated or if it was part of a bigger plot. Judging by the message, it was the later.

That meant there were more of those guys out there somewhere.

In one world, the man called Shou donned his ANBU gear and disappeared from his home without a second thought, but that world was not this one.

Here, he found himself thinking of his own daughter. Thinking of her prompted him to go check on her, and checking on her prompted a discovery that would ultimately save his own life.

Suzuki Setsuna had calculated her chances of passing the secret second test, and, knowing that she would fail, had unplugged her own alarm clock.


	2. Ultimatum

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Suzuki Shou approaches the Hokage with an ultimatum.

Notes: This chapter is basically an extension of the prologue. Moving forward, the chapters will be longer.

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Ultimatum

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Shou had known about all the clan kids in his daughter's class, but he'd been so involved with other things that he hadn't truly considered the implications.

The InoShikaCho formation would be recreated. Hyūga, Inuzuka, and Aburame would form a tracking team. Hatake would take on the Uchiha and the Uzumaki because of his sharingan. That team's third member would be the girl who scored the highest on the written exam. Haruno had beaten out his daughter by one point.

He was never one to be concerned with prestige, but surely his daughter deserved better than to be failed because of something as simple as _status. _Had he truly done so poorly as a ninja that he had failed his daughter? The very person who he'd worked so hard to support? Obviously, as his family name didn't carry enough esteem to allow her to achieve her dreams.

And the fact that she was aware of her status somehow made it worse. His _daughter_, his _sunshine_, his _darling doe-eyed girl, _was already disenchanted with the world they lived in. When had she stopped believing that determination could get her anything?

Suzuki Shou wasn't just angry, he was _furious_.

So furious, in fact, that he almost didn't knock before he stormed into the Hokage's office.

Outwardly, the man knew, he showed no sign of his fury—he'd spent far too long as a ninja for his emotions to be easily recognizable—but regardless, the Hokage immediately took note of it and signaled for the privacy seals around his office to be activated.

"You aren't in uniform," the Hokage stated. Shou imagined this was particularly odd for the Hokage, as he very rarely came to see him outside of a professional visit.

"I am here as Suzuki Shou." The '_not as an ANBU operative'_ went unsaid, but was universally understood.

"I see…" said the Hokage. He placed the pipe he'd been smoking onto his desk, then steepled his fingers. "What is your query?"

"My daughter has recently graduated from the academy. She approached me this morning with concerns that she would fail the second genin exam."

The Hokage raised an eyebrow, "You told her of the second exam?"

"No. She figured it out on her own," and, because he couldn't help but brag, he added, "She was third in her class."

She was such a smart little girl, his Setsuna. She'd gotten top marks on all the practicals, and was one point away from perfect on the written exam. More like her mother, in that way—for all that Shou was a strong shinobi now, he'd been deadlast at the academy.

"I'm not sure I understand. If your daughter feels that she is not ready to graduate, then there's nothing that I—"

"—Hokage-sama," Shou interrupted, "I never said that."

It was very unlike Shou to interrupt _anyone_, which was probably the only reason he escaped a reprimand from his superior. Instead, the Hokage waited for further explanation, "Oh?"

"Her concern was that with seven heirs from prominent clans in her year, the only way she'd pass was if she managed to get on a team with at least one of them. She seemed to think that this was impossible. Tell me, are her concerns valid?" he asked, although he was almost sure of the answer.

The Hokage relit his pipe, and seemed to age several years. "They are valid."

Shou had never been angrier—not even when a member of his squad had turned traitor. "She was the top female student! Third in her class! Surely you won't refuse someone with such potential!" He didn't quite yell, but his tone was acerbic, and the tension in the room was such that the guards stationed there began to fidget.

"She'll make it through next year."

What he wanted to say to that was highly inappropriate in front of a superior, so he held his tongue.

Setsuna _could_ pass next year. She might not enjoy it, but at least she'd be safe from the dangers of being a shinobi for another year, right?

Shou was suddenly hit with a sense of urgency—Setsuna had to pass this year. He wasn't sure where the feeling came from, but he didn't make jōnin by ignoring his gut reactions. "In that case, I'm requesting permission to resign."

The Hokage straightened in what was clearly surprise. "Excuse me?"

"If my daughter is not fit to become a genin after six years of study at the academy, then it is obvious that she needs individualized instruction. As the only shinobi in my family, it is necessary that I take on this responsibility."

This was a calculated risk. Should the Hokage choose to allow him to resign, things could go very badly. Hisako was currently unemployed in order to start her own tailoring business, and while the Suzuki family did have some money put aside, it likely wouldn't last a full year. Truthfully, Shou needed his job.

However, ANBU was already understaffed, especially in the Espionage Unit. Shou had been the head of Espionage for several years now, and finding a suitable replacement would be difficult. Not just anyone could head such a division—the operative had to be completely trustworthy, and was required to go through a thorough mental examination by a Yamanaka to ensure that no village secrets, especially in regards to the identities of spies in the field, could be leaked. The downside of such an invasive procedure was that it could leave the recipient brain-dead if done incorrectly. Unfortunately—or perhaps, fortunately only for Shou—the only Yamanaka who could guarantee a 100% success rate for a complete mind examination was Yamanaka Inoichi, who had retired from ANBU years ago, when his daughter entered the academy.

Shou had reason to believe that Inoichi would come out of retirement soon enough—Inoichi's wife was Shou's old teammate, and they still got together sometimes—but the Hokage had no way to know that, and Shou was willing to bet he wouldn't call a retired shinobi back to duty unless there was an emergency

"… Your daughter will pass this year."

Shou fought the urge to smile, as that could easily be seen as disrespectful, and instead bowed politely.

"I see. Thank you for your consideration, Hokage-sama. If you'll excuse me, I have several reports to file."


	3. Team Four

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Genin teams are assigned.

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Team Four

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The Hokage was feeling the beginnings of a massive migraine, and it wasn't even seven AM yet.

He'd been looking forward to an easy day of simple paperwork—there weren't any ongoing missions that were politically sensitive, and all was running as it typically did in the village proper. He hadn't even had a single meeting scheduled until later in the evening, and even then, it was only Hyūga Hiashi with another request that his youngest daughter be moved up a few years in the academy, despite the fact that there were now laws in place against such a thing. At least that decision would be easy.

Sparrow had managed to complicate his day in less than ten minutes.

He hadn't even realized that this was the year Sparrow's kid would graduate. Hell, he hardly even remembered the man had a kid—it had scarcely come up. After all, one of the things that made Sparrow the perfect man to run the Espionage Unit was that he was perfectly professional; the Hokage could count on one hand the number of times the man's personal life had come up during his time in ANBU. Once, when an apprehended spy had recognized him, and then once more when he had to take time off for his newborn baby—the very girl who was currently causing the Hokage such a headache.

When he'd seen the list of graduates, he'd known the name was familiar, but Sparrow was remarkably good at hiding the fact that he even had a life outside of ANBU, or rather, Suzuki Shou was remarkably good at hiding the fact that he didn't just have an office job. Now, he was kicking himself for letting that detail slip his mind.

If the girl was anything like her father, she'd be a valuable addition to the shinobi force, and, looking through her file, it seemed like that was the case. Hell, even just the fact that she'd recognized there'd be a second test was indicative that she'd make a good shinobi. It took some genin years to learn to look underneath the underneath!

Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple as just ordering a fourth team to be passed. For one thing, only the jōnin assigned to teams Seven, Eight, and Ten were currently cleared to take a genin team—the others were merely there for show. There wasn't a single other jōnin in all of Konoha who'd applied to take a team and had been accepted. Finding another teacher within such a short time frame would be difficult, if not outright impossible.

In addition to that, the chūnin teachers held something of a contest to see who could come up with the worst possible teams out of the genin not on one of the three squads meant to pass. Therefore, Suzuki Setsuna's teammates were guaranteed to be people she couldn't work with.

So, passing a fourth team would mean rearranging ALL the teams.

He supposed he could just add Suzuki to one of the three teams being allowed to pass. It wasn't too strange to have a five-man team, especially in the upper ranks. If he put her on the tracking team, people would assume they were being trained as hunter-nin. That might even satiate Hyūga Hiashi's pride—his eldest was slated to be on that team. On the other hand, doing such a thing would leave another team short a member, and looking towards the future, would make it impossible for the whole team to take the chūnin exam together. At least one would need to receive a field promotion… Plus, four genin was a lot to handle, especially for a jōnin as new as Kurenai.

He could get the girl apprenticed... He shook his head. The council would demand to know why such a privilege was afforded to a clanless girl instead of the Uchiha heir, and he couldn't divulge Sparrow's true identity. Perhaps he could make it seem like she was specifically requested... No, top three or not, the girl hadn't made nearly enough waves for such a thing to make sense—Danzo would spot the deceit straight away.

He sighed heavily.

He'd have to pass another team.

There was still the jōnin issue, but he couldn't waste any more time; school would be starting soon. First, he had to get the teams reassigned, and then he'd worry about the fourth teacher.

What was it about Team Four that made it impossible for them to work together? One glance at Hamada Touya's disciplinary file easily answered that question. It seemed that Hamada and Suzuki resented each other, or at least he resented her. Around half of his impressive stack of citations was for harassing the girl. Her other teammate, Ishida Fuyuki, however, seemed to be relatively even tempered and was listed as getting along with most other students.

If Hamada was the problem, he could likely get away with just switching the boy out for another student…

But he still had to find an additional jōnin.

"Cat," he said, calling the ANBU stationed as his guard for the morning. "Bring me the register of all active jōnin in the village."

"Understood," said the purple-haired woman, disappearing in a whirl of leaves.

Actually, that gave him an idea…

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Across town, Ishida Fuyuki was nose deep in a downright fascinating book. He'd been reading since sunrise, when he'd woken up full of excitement. School had been on break for the week while team assignments were made, and he was looking forward to finally having something to do again. Of course, he could hardly head to school so early—no one would be there!—so instead, he'd arbitrarily picked a book from his overflowing bookshelf and sat down to read in the kitchen.

The neighborhood was usually dead silent at this time in the morning, but Fuyuki could hear the distant sound of drunken fighting through the window, which had yet to be repaired from the last time someone tried to break in. He figured it was probably the couple from the next apartment building over, because they always seemed to be fighting.

The yelling seemed to have woken Atsushi, the homeless man who slept in the alley behind the building, because Fuyuki could faintly hear him beginning to mumble about those "worthless Sky ninjas" who "put a curse on Konoha." Fuyuki figured the man was a war veteran, but he was also a drunk, so he only ever gave the man food, for fear he'd spend any cash given to him on booze.

A look at the clock reminded him that it was time to make breakfast. He put two pieces of bread in the toaster and turned the settings down to its lowest option. He returned to his seat at the table and begun to read again, quickly becoming absorbed.

Who knew that Konoha had produced so many interesting Shinobi! Not to mention all those cool, detailed battles! Maybe someday he'd get featured in a history book. Hopefully it'd be for getting rid of someone nasty, totally saving the day. Heh, maybe he'd even take out an s-class missing nin; he'd surely be remembered for that!

His toast popped from the toaster, startling him. He crinkled his nose—burnt, again. No matter what he did, it seemed like his toast was always burnt. He was beginning to wonder if Ami had hit it with a lightning jutsu on accident and hadn't told him.

Speaking of Ami, it was almost 6:30, and if they didn't head out soon, they'd be late. Of course, his older sister was not a morning person by any means, and he could hear her in the other room only just rolling out of bed. He supposed he could leave without her—it would be disappointing if he had to spend another year in school just because he was late for his team assignment—but Ami taught at the academy, and it seemed silly to leave at separate times when they were both going to the same place.

Well, whatever happens, happens.

He could probably handle an extra year if he had to. At the very least, it would give him more time to read interesting books. He'd been meaning to start reading about medical Ninjutsu, and remedial year would be an excellent time to do it, except, well, he kinda wanted to be a ninja now. He was already two years behind his peers…

Finally decided, Fuyuki called out, "Hey Ami, not to rush you or anything, but you need to rush." He was sure that Ami could hear him just fine, so he didn't raise his voice much, lest he wake the elderly couple in the apartment below theirs.

"Huh? Oh shit! We're gonna be late!" came her muffled reply. There was a series of crashes from the other room, something that sounded suspiciously like glass shattering, and then her bedroom door hit the wall with a bang. She sprinted out of her room with her hair a mess, but she'd somehow managed to put on her typical uniform (which was just the standard chūnin outfit) and put together her school bag in under thirty seconds. "Toss me the breath mints! No time to brush my teeth—we've got to go!"

"I haven't made a lunch yet," he said as he tossed her the breath mints she kept on the counter for exactly these situations.

"Well, lucky for you, I've got your back!" she chirped, pulling on her shoes. Fuyuki noticed that they were kind of beat up, and made a mental note to buy her new ones with his first paycheck. "You're graduating today, so there's sekihan, and then there's some other stuff I know you like!"

Fuyuki grinned. He really appreciated her efforts, especially since it made his life easier. While the bento she prepared likely wasn't going to taste good, it was probably going to look nice. Maybe he could convince one of his friends to swap lunches with him—Miyu's parents were sure to pack her something tasty, or if he was really lucky, Chouji might swap with him.

"Thanks! Let's go, then!" Fuyuki finished off the last of his toast and brushed away the crumbs that had accumulated on his jacket.

"Race you there!" called Ami, already halfway out the door.

"Hey! No fair!"

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Naruto was running a little bit late.

He hadn't meant to sleep in, really, not today of all days! Most of the time he had no problem skipping class, but today was the day he would get put on a genin team. If he wasn't there on time, he'd be failed!

Still, he couldn't not eat. What if his sensei wanted him to run laps or something? He couldn't do that on an empty stomach!

So Naruto chugged a bit of milk and waited impatiently for his water to boil.

Maybe he should turn the heat to ten… No, the last time he'd tried that, he'd accidentally set his apartment on fire. He sighed, tapping his foot. He hated waiting for ramen.

Finally, Naruto decided that the water was bubbly enough and poured it into his ramen. He really had to go now. He grabbed a pair of chopsticks and moved to bolt out the door, only to find it stuck. Again.

"Seriously? Why is everything in my apartment so shitty?" he slurred, mouth full of ramen. He swallowed a large number of noodles with a loud gulp. It wasn't cooked enough, but then, his ramen usually wasn't. He kicked at the door, hoping that would unstick it. "Goddamn it!"

Suddenly, the door made a strange grinding noise. "What? Holy shit! Do have rats? Again?" He couldn't believe it. He'd just gotten rid of them, too!

The handle turned from the other side. The door opened to reveal a tall man who was sliding a nail file of some sort into his standard issue ninja vest with a singular eyebrow raised. He had dark skin, and short dark hair. Naruto thought he'd seen him before, but that could've just been because the guy looked like every other jōnin he'd ever seen—tall, middle aged, and blank faced. The only thing he had that made him even a little different from all the others was a blue scarf wrapped around his waist, which seemed a little impractical to Naruto. Like, what was that gonna keep warm?

"Uhhhh… Thanks, I guess?"

"You should replace the screws on your hinges, and then oil them. It won't get stuck as much that way."

"Huh?" Naruto had been too distracted by the sudden relief that he didn't have rats to really listen to the guy. He'd clearly said something, though, since he hadn't left yet. Also, he had some sort of mask attached to his belt that Naruto had missed before. Some type of bird, maybe? If he put it on, maybe he would be less boring… "What?"

"You should try tightening the screws then oiling the hinges. The door won't stick so much then," he repeated.

Oh, right. The sticky door. He could fix that? He'd just thought the door was too big or something. "What, like, with cooking oil? I didn't know you could do that…"

The guy sighed, "No. Not cooking oil. You should use," he paused eyeing Naruto's confused expression, "the stuff you use on weapon parts. Use that."

"Why?" asked Naruto. He needed that oil for the Fūma Shuriken he'd always wanted to use, and it wouldn't be the first time a shinobi lied to him to damage his things. 'Stupid fox.'

"… It's the same product you'd buy for door hinges, because it's meant to be used for metal-on-metal lubrication, as opposed to being for cooking."

"Well what's the difference?" asked Naruto, putting the hand that wasn't holding his ramen onto his hip. They could be the same thing except named differently… What's that called? A cinnamon?

"Cooking oils come from plants, mostly, and so it can rot and go bad whereas oils with mechanical uses come from petroleum, which is found under ground and doesn't typically expire."

"Oh." Naruto blinked in surprise. Nobody 'cept for Iruka-sensei and the old man bothered explaining anything to him. Ever. He really wasn't expecting the generic looking guy to answer.

The guy's eyebrow was still raised. "Aren't you running late to school?"

…?

"Shit! Get out of the way, Cannon Fodder, I have to get to class!" yelled Naruto as he whirred past him.

If things continued on this way, he'd be stuck as an academy student forever!

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Setsuna was almost to school when she suddenly found herself laying on the ground, covered in ramen. She sighed, staring up at the clouds. That one looked sort of like her crumbling hopes and ambitions.

"Sorry, sorry! I'm really in a hurry, I can't stop, believe it!" yelled her assailant, hopping to his feet and taking off in a blur of orange.

"I don't believe it," she sighed. Why'd it have to be her? There were dozens of other people on the street, but somehow she was the one covered in food. Was it a sign from the gods? Should she have pretended to be asleep when her father knocked?

Suddenly, the orange-clad boy returned. He must've realized he wasn't that late. "Uh. Are you okay?"

"No."

"Oh… Well, you're kinda in the middle of the street? You'll get trampled."

"Good. Leave me here to die," she grumbled. "That'll save me some embarrassment at least."

"Really?" A glance at the boy revealed that he was wide-eyed in something akin to terror. He had the air of someone who was feeling incredibly guilty.

Well, best not traumatize him for real.

"Okay. I'm done with that." She sat up slowly, brushing off several small noodles and pieces of carrot. Luckily, the soup hadn't been very hot, or she might've been legitimately angry. "Good morning, Uzumaki-san; you could've just said hello. No need to tackle me to the ground."

The boy looked extremely confused. "Sorry, uh… Do I know you?"

Setsuna looked up and to the right. "This is my life, this is who I am," she turned back to Uzumaki. "You've just made this really awkward. You could've just said sorry."

"Uh… Sorry?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "Listen, right now I really want to get a change of clothes, but we've got to get to the academy. I'm also not going to make you do my laundry. But I could. Just remember that, Uzumaki-san."

"Oh! You're in my class? We should walk together!" said Uzumaki, grinning widely.

"You just spilled food all over me," said Setsuna, all the same falling in to step beside him.

Uzumaki paused, looking befuddled, "So you don't want to walk with me?"

"I'm not going to make you take a detour just so you won't be walking next to me. We're going to the same place—that'd just be silly."

"Oh. Well, okay then. Hey, what's your name anyways?" asked the boy, once again smiling brightly.

"Suzuki Setsuna," she answered flatly. How could he not know her name? They'd been in the same class for over five years!

Uzumaki seemed to struggle for something to say, finally settling on, "That's a cool name. So, are you excited about team assignments? I sure am!"

"Mm, I'm not so much excited as I am resigned. About the last thing I want to do is get teamed up, especially since I might end up with people I don't like. But it's either that or quit, right?" She paused, coming to a sudden realization. "Hey, I thought you failed—"

"—Sakura-chan!" yelled Uzumaki, waving rapidly at the pink haired girl. He turned to Setsuna, "Sorry, Generic Boy, I haveta catch up to Sakura-chan!"

Generic boy…? Motherfucker.

She was going to kill him. She was literally going to kill him. She wasn't generic! Look at her hair! She was super remarkable—totally memorable!

Let's see how generic I am when I shove—

"Suna-chan!" Setsuna looked up and saw her friend Ino hanging out of the door to the Academy, waving. "If you don't hurry, you'll be late!"

Setsuna smiled and ran to meet the shorter girl. "Good morning, Ino-chan!"

"Morning!" The blonde furrowed her brow, head cocked to the side. "Are you covered in ramen?"

She sighed, "Yeah. It's a long story," she paused, thinking. "Well, not really. Someone spilled their breakfast on me. Say, Ino-chan, am I generic?"

"Generic? Not really. I mean, your hair isn't a bright color or anything, but I wouldn't say you look like everyone else. Why?"

"No reason… So, are you excited about team assignments?"

The girl shrugged, "Not really. I mean, I'm bound to be placed with Shikamaru and Chouji, and that sucks, but it's not like I didn't know it would happen… Still, someone has to be placed with Sasuke-kun—I hope it's not forehead-girl. She'd never stop gloating!" The two girls chatted companionably about this and that until they reached the classroom, where they had to part ways. There we're only a few seats left, and none of them next to each other. Setsuna figured that Ino would rather not sit next to Aburame, who was kind of creepy, so she sat there instead, while the blonde took a seat next to Nara.

Soon enough, Iruka-sensei entered the classroom and began a long-winded lecture on their future as genin of Konoha. Too bad more than half of them would have to attend another year… He also seemed to have a never-ending stack of paperwork for them to fill out, including several release forms, which Setsuna found to be a little morbid. There was a particularly long contract that she made sure to at least skim through, but it was incredibly boring—the most important thing seemed to be that she could be called back into duty anytime, even if she was retired. So, if she signed the paper, she was in it for life.

Well, it's not like she had any other plans. Somehow, being a merchant or a tailor like her mother just didn't seem as interesting as being able to legally use techniques that could tear down mountains or pause rivers. Plus, civilians were kind of helpless in the grand scheme of things. At least as a ninja she could protect herself.

She signed the papers and noted that she was the last to do so, and other students were giving her impatient looks. Whoops.

"Alright, with the paperwork out of the way, it's time for team assignments," said Iruka-sensei. There were several cheers from the more excitable students, and the energy in the room seemed to increase ten-fold as nearly everyone sat up straighter. "Team one, Takahashi—" Knock, knock. "Sorry everyone; I've got to get that."

There was an audible groan from nearly everyone in the room as he left the classroom to speak to whoever was outside.

"Are you kidding me?" yelled Uzumaki. "We've been waiting all day for this!"

"Don't be an idiot, Naruto!" Haruno yelled right back. "Ten more minutes of waiting won't kill you."

"But it sure is annoying," grumbled Nara. "You'd think the guy would interrupt when we were busy reading all that lousy paperwork."

There were several other scattered conversations, all of which halted immediately when a confused looking Iruka-sensei reentered the room carrying a different list than he had before. This one was on a scroll, as opposed to just being on a normal sheet of paper. "Sorry about that, class. I'll read the assignments now. Try to listen the first time—I don't like repeating myself."

Setsuna listened intently for her name—since Uzumaki had somehow managed to graduate, there was a small chance she'd be placed on his team. She wasn't top in academics, but she was top in everything else, so it was still up in the air…

"Team Four: Ishida Fuyuki, Suzuki Setsuna, and Uzumaki Naruto."

…!

Now this she could work with! The two boys weren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed, but neither of them were particularly antagonistic, either. Happy-go-lucky idiots, but more importantly, Uzumaki came from a significant clan, and he had an in with the Hokage.

Yes! Things are finally coming up Suzuki!

"… What? But sensei, I wanted to be on a team with Sakura-chan!" yelled Uzumaki.

Haruno flushed a bright, angry red. Iruka-sensei twitched. "Take it up with the Hokage. This is your team."

Uzumaki gave a few more token protests, but Iruka-sensei just began to talk over him, and that was that. Uzumaki was clearly sulking, like this was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. And maybe it was—Setsuna had never had a crush, so she wouldn't know.

But who cared about that, honestly! Her chances for passing the second test had just increased exponentially!

"Team Seven: Hamada Touya, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke."

There was a loud explosion of noise from the girls who'd yet to be assigned.

Now that was interesting. Hamada wasn't even close to dead last. In fact, he was right in the middle of the rankings. He shouldn't have been placed with Uchiha. Did it have something to do with whatever that last-minute adjustment had been? In all likelihood, the teams probably should have been Haruno, Uchiha, Uzumaki and her, Hamada, and Ishida.

Thank god for small mercies.

Being on a team with Hamada would've been the worst thing to ever happen to her. In fact, she probably would've failed the second test purposefully. He was a pretentious jerk, and Ishida only would've exacerbated that.

She'd much rather have Uzumaki and Ishida, at any rate.

He finished reading off the list and rerolled the scroll. Setsuna eyed where he'd placed it carefully. Maybe she could just sneak a small peak—but that would have to wait. Right now, she was supposed to be eating lunch with her teammates who were… Gone already?

Seriously? So much for team bonding.

Even Aburame's team had waited for him! He was the creepiest kid in their class!

Well, fine then. Her mom had packed a huge lunch for her to share with her new team, but she was just going to eat the sweet stuff and hide the rest. Clearly, they'd brought their own lunches. Hopefully it was all burnt.

She quickly picked out what she was going to eat and packed the rest away. The classroom was empty, and she thought about going to read that scroll, but Iruka-sensei never took too long at lunch and she didn't want to risk it.

She sighed, looking out the window towards where she could see Ino having lunch with her new team. She appeared to be yelling at them already. No surprise there—Ino despised their laidback attitudes—but the three had been friends since childhood, so Setsuna figured it was more friendly bickering than actual fighting.

Suddenly, Ino looked up and spotted her. The other girl smiled and waved, which Setsuna returned.

Well, at least if things went bad she could live vicariously through Ino.

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* * *

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Fuyuki watched as one by one, teams were called out of the room. A lot of the jōnin sensei seemed to be just regular run of the mill shinobi, but Team Ten had been assigned Sarutobi Asuma, who'd been part of the Twelve Guardian Shinobi for a while, and Team Eight had just left with Yuuhi Kurenai.

That had been kind of a shame—Fuyuki would've loved to have a genjutsu master as a sensei.

Eventually, all the teams had been called except for Team Seven and Team Four.

Minutes turned into hours, and both teams were still waiting, even though Iruka-sensei had long since excused himself. The other genin were clearly agitated, and Fuyuki figured it was only a matter of time before someone snapped.

Out of the five other genin, Touya seemed the most likely to start something. He was tapping his foot on the ground aggressively, all the while giving Naruto evil eyes, presumably because the blond was amusing himself by jumping from desk to desk in what looked to be an intense game of The Floor is Hot Lava. If Touya decided to say something about it, Setsuna would likely jump to Naruto's defense, just out of sheer boredom, and then the whole situation would implode.

Just having those two in the same room was asking for trouble.

Anyone with half a brain knew that Touya and Setsuna hated each other. Their fights were actually kind of legendary around the classroom. Setsuna had a sharp tongue—she knew just where to attack to get the most hurt feelings—and Fuyuki figured that was the reason Touya fought with her so frequently. He thought the other boy might be slightly masochistic. Any fight they had now would probably be incredibly explosive, since it would be their last for a while.

Fuyuki wished he'd thought to bring a book… Maybe Ami was still hanging around somewhere—she'd surely have one.

But if he left the room, his sensei might show up, and then he'd be failed for being absent.

No, he'd best find another way to entertain himself.

"Soooo..." he said, breaking the silence both because he was bored, and because Touya was beginning to open his mouth. "Do you think the Hokage forgot to assign us someone?"

"Don't be stupid," said Sakura, who'd been reading for the past hour or so after giving up on pestering Sasuke.

"Yeah! The old man would never do something like that!" added Naruto, who was now standing on Iruka-sensei's desk.

"Naruto! Don't talk about the Hokage so familiarly!" Sakura reprimanded, shaking her fist at him. She probably would've attacked him, except that doing so would mean leaving her seat next to Sasuke. "Besides, Iruka-sensei is the one who makes the assignments."

"But does he assign the jōnin? How does that work anyways? Do they have to apply?" asked Fuyuki, genuinely curious. "Can't imagine that they'd let just anyone train a genin team."

"Well, they let Orochimaru train one, right? Have you ever read about that guy? One paragraph in and he's setting off every creep alarm in the book," Setsuna said, as blank faced as ever.

"Orochimaru was one of the legendary sannin. Of course they let him train a team," said Touya, glaring at Setsuna. "Idiot."

Setsuna narrowed her eyes, and Fuyuki inwardly sighed.

Luckily for everyone in the room, Naruto spoke before Setsuna, thus inadvertently preventing what would have been a vicious fight.

"Say, who's this Orochimaru guy anyways?"

Sakura dropped her head onto her desk with a solid thunk. "How can anyone be so dumb?"

Wow, Fuyuki sure felt bad for Naruto. That had to sting. "Well, Orochimaru was one of the Hokage's students," he explained. "He was pretty strong, but he got too power-hungry and started doing experiments on babies and stuff, so now he's an s-class missing nin."

"Wow, no way! I didn't know the old man had a genin team! With a teacher like that, I bet they were all crazy powerful!"

At this point, Fuyuki was sure that Sakura was going to develop bruises on her forehead from slamming it repeatedly into her desk.

"Hey, Sakura-chan, did I say something wrong?" asked Naruto.

"How did you even get through the academy?" she groaned.

"Yeah, actually, I've been wondering about that," said Setsuna, "I thought you failed the graduation exam?"

"I did! But then I kicked some major ass and learned a cool jutsu and Iruka-sensei gave me his headband!"

"What kind of cool jutsu?" asked Setsuna. "Has to be pretty powerful if you made Umino-sensei change his mind."

"Tch, yeah right. The dead last wouldn't know a powerful jutsu if it tore through his chest," Sasuke said. He'd previously been pretending he wasn't listening, so Fuyuki figured it was an improvement.

"Hey! You take that back, asshole! I'm the best ninja Konoha's ever seen!" said Naruto, flipping off Sasuke.

Sasuke snorted, "Konoha must be pretty blind, then."

"Bastard!"

"Hn. Dead last."

Naruto leapt from his place on the desk and charged at Sasuke, tackling the other boy on to the floor with a large crash. Sakura jumped away from the two wrestling boys in shock. When she regained her bearings, she began cheering for Sasuke.

Well, at least it wasn't Touya and Setsuna.

Hmm? Oh, someone was coming through the door! Hopefully it'd be his sensei!

The door slid fully open, and behind it was Sharingan no Kakashi! Wow, he was a legendary shinobi! Maybe he'd be—well, no, he couldn't be. Obviously he was going to take Team Seven, because he could teach Sasuke how to use his sharingan. How disappointing.

"Hm," said the man. "I wasn't expecting there to be another team here."

Abruptly, the two boys stopped fighting and scrambled to get to their feet.

"Hey, asshole, you're late!"

"Naruto! Don't talk to him like that, he could be your sensei!" growled Sakura, hitting Naruto on the head. "Sorry, Jōnin-san, Naruto's just an idiot; I'd never say anything like that!"

"Ugh, shut up, Haruno," Touya grouched. "Are you here for Team Seven or Team Four?"

"Team Seven."

Fuyuki sighed. Figures.

"I see…" said Kakashi, eyeing his new genin team. "My first impression of you guys is… You're all idiots. Meet me up on the roof."

Kakashi disappeared in a flurry of leaves, leaving Team Seven to run after him.

"And then there were three," sighed Setsuna, standing up from her seat in the top row and stretching.

"What do you guys think is keeping our sensei? Must be pretty serious if he's later than Hatake Kakashi."

"You know that guy?" asked Setsuna, running her fingers through her hair, leaving it standing up in gravity defying spikes.

"Sure! That was Sharingan no Kakashi! He's an elite ninja who studied under the Fourth Hokage, and he's legendary for showing up late to everything—even meetings with the Hokage!" said Fuyuki, grinning widely.

He'd been reading about the guy just that morning! He and his teammates were the ones to destroy the Kannabi Bridge, cutting off a major supply route for Iwagakure's army. This was largely cited as the action that turned the war in Konoha's favor.

"Well, I'm glad he's not our sensei—I don't think I could handle having a teacher that's late for everything."

"Our sensei still hasn't arrived," said Fuyuki. "He could have worse habits."

"Or he could just be really unlucky!" chirped Naruto.


	4. Lighting the Candle at Both Ends

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Suzuki Shou disturbs a butterfly. Naruto gets a slightly different team.

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* * *

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Lighting the Candle at Both Ends

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* * *

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Mitarashi Anko was having a bad day.

She'd just arrived back from what had been a very long and tiring escort mission. Her client had spent the whole day complaining about how he didn't think such a pretty young lady could be a good defense against whatever guys he was avoiding, and while Anko had needed to deal with the same song and dance for every escort mission she'd ever taken part of, even as a genin, it had never gotten any less annoying. As such, she was very much looking forward to going home and taking a nap before going out to drink with Kurenai.

So, when she'd walked into the village as the sun was setting and was almost immediately accosted by a messenger from the Hokage, Anko felt she had a right to the long stream of swears that left her mouth.

What could the Hokage possibly need her for?

Surely this wasn't about the incident with Asuma at the apiary... She'd already told him that was an accident.

No, the messenger wouldn't have made it sound so urgent if it was about that.

So what could it be? Was it Orochimaru? Sparrow had been tracking the bastard for months, so maybe he'd finally got the okay to send someone after him.

If that was the case, she'd happily oblige. She made her way across town as fast as possible. There was a large chance it wasn't about her ex-sensei, but she figured she'd better hurry just in case.

When she approached the Hokage's secretary, the snooty chūnin greeted her and said she'd better hurry in to see the Hokage. This was strange, because the annoying woman typically made her wait several minutes, even if she'd been summoned, before she'd let her in to see the village leader.

The Hokage was looking harried when she entered his office. Anko bowed respectfully and was prepared to wait until the man finished whatever paperwork he was currently doing, even as she was practically bursting with the hope that she might get to finally kill the snake. As it happened, she didn't have to wait long. When the older man looked up and saw her, he immediately put his papers to the side.

"Mitarashi-san. We have very little time to discuss this, so I won't beat around the bush. I need someone to take a genin team. You are the best option. Will you take them on as your students?"

Anko nearly choked on her own spit, which set her off in a terrible coughing fit reminiscent of Gekkō Hayate. "A genin team? From the class that graduated just recently?"

"Yes," said the Hokage. "This is politically sensitive. A fourth team must be passed because of one of its members, however, there are no jōnin qualified to take on a team at the moment. As I said before, you are the best option."

"I see," said Anko, though she really didn't. Surely there was someone else better qualified than her? She could name a few tokubetsu jōnin just off the top of her head. "How long do I have to consider this?"

"I need an answer before you leave the office," said the Hokage, and Anko thought she saw a flash of guilt in the older man's eyes. "The team has been waiting for their sensei since around noon."

Heh, poor bastards—waiting for a sensei that hadn't even been assigned yet.

But a genin team, huh? Anko never had any particular desire to teach anyone, least of all a bunch of snot-nosed brats. She had no doubt she could teach them how to fight, but there was a bunch of other things necessary to be a good genin squad leader. For one thing, genin teams needed teachers who could support them through all the emotional bullshit that comes with being trained to kill.

Anko was a lot of things, but mothering was not one of them.

On top of that, teaching was a lot of work. She'd have to put her own training aside to do it. There'd have to be a hell of a reward in it for her if he really wanted her to accept.

"Hokage-sama, I'm sorry, but I'm not really—"

"If you take on this team, I'll promote you," he interrupted.

Anko blinked in surprise. Was that a bribe? "Why?"

"You possess skills equivalent to jōnin level, and frequently act with the authority and poise that a jōnin should possess. Frankly, you would already have made the cut if you had the social connections necessary. Taking this team will get you the connections that you need."

Anko thought about that for a moment. Being a jōnin came with several perks that you just didn't get as a tokubetsu jōnin. For one thing, jōnin got significantly higher pay. They also got to go on more dangerous missions, which taking out Orochimaru was sure to be.

… Plus, she had always wanted to be a jōnin, and with the village's distrust of her, this was probably the only way she'd achieve it.

Kurenai was taking a team this year, wasn't she? Maybe she could help her out… How hard could training a bunch of brats be anyways? Even her old teammate, Satoshi, was apparently capable of it, and he was an oblivious idiot.

And if she did it right, she might only have to teach them for six months, and then they'd be chūnin…

"…Alright, I'll do it. Who are these kids?"

The Hokage smiled. "These are their files. You should head downstairs to the academy as soon as possible—Kakashi arrived to meet his team about an hour ago."

She was later than Kakashi? Well, shit. That was sure to make a good impression.

She briefly leafed through the files as she left the Hokage's office, neatly dodging out of the way of Hyūga Hiashi when he appeared suddenly in front of the door. Reading the names of her new genin team, she suddenly realized why this was "politically sensitive."

The Kyuubi brat, huh? Well, she wasn't one of those prejudiced punks, so that sort of explained why the Hokage wanted her. If anyone understood that he wasn't what he kept sealed, it was her.

Moving on, the girl whose name was snow something-or-other had the best scores on the team, placing third overall, but the other boy wasn't too bad either, placing tenth. Uzumaki had been the dead last—apparently he'd failed the actual test but had received a field promotion. Huh.

Well, no use delaying any longer. She'd meet the team, introduce herself, and then if she liked them, she'd take them out for dinner. The academy was located just next to the Hokage's tower, and the genin were rather easy to find, since they were the only ones in the building.

As she approached, she could hear someone snoring, but that was about it. From their chakra signatures, she could tell that all three were asleep. Anko grinned widely. _Well, this could be fun._

She was perfectly silent as she slid open the door, a testament to her experience as a shinobi. She wasn't expecting the precariously placed chalkboard eraser, but she leaned out of the way easily enough.

She examined the three genin in the classroom. Her eyes were drawn immediately to Uzumaki, both because he was dressed in orange and because he was the one snoring. He was splayed out haphazardly on the first row of desks in a position that had to be uncomfortable. In the row behind him was a boy with messy hair pulled into a braid, who seemed to have fallen asleep while sharpening a kunai. In the back of the room was the team's girl, who could've been mistaken for an Inuzuka with that wild hair and tan skin. She was sitting up straight, looking for all the world like she'd just closed her eyes for a moment.

The eraser hit the ground with a light thump.

Braid boy jerked awake, reaching reflexively for one of the knives on the table. The girl's eyes snapped open. Uzumaki awoke with the change in the atmosphere.

She could work with that.

"Are you guys Team Four?" she asked, breaking the heavy silence. They nodded.

"Alright then, follow me to the roof!" she stated before teleporting away in a whirl of leaves.

Aw yeah, she probably looked so cool!

The genin appeared on the roof minutes later, and she led them over to a bench near the edge of the roof while she sat on the railing. Uzumaki was the most energetic of the bunch, jittering about even as he took his seat. Ishida was calmer, but still looked pretty happy to be there. Meanwhile, Suzuki was blank faced.

The perfect emotional spectrum, these three.

"Hey, good evening, brats," she started. None of them replied, so she continued on. "First off, the fact that I was later than Kakashi is something that you are never to mention to anyone, ever. My colleagues would never let me live it down, and so I would never let _you_ live it down, got it? I was out on a mission, so I had no idea I was even taking on a Genin team. Lucky you, am I right? I'm Mitarashi Anko."

"Hiya," said Uzumaki with a wave and a smile. The other two said nothing.

Talkative bunch, this group.

"Well. I know nothing about you except for what's in your files, which is honestly not much." She hadn't actually read the files, merely skimmed them, but she was certain that this was the case. "Why don't we introduce ourselves? I've already said my name, so I'll skip over that part. I'm twenty-four, and I got promoted to jōnin specifically to teach you punks, probably because I'm the best. I like dango, and I dislike children. I would say that my best skill is my experience with poisons. My worst is probably fighting hand to hand. My goal is to hunt down s-class missing nin." Anko gestured to Uzumaki, who seemed to be the most talkative of the three. "Why don't you go next?"

"Sure! My name's Uzumaki Naruto! I'm twelve years old, and I really like ramen, and I dislike waiting the three minutes it takes for instant ramen to cook!" he said, futzing around with his headband. "My best skill is the Shadow Clone Jutsu, but I'm really bad at the normal clone jutsu. My goal is to be the strongest Hokage this village has ever seen, that way everyone will respect me!" he smiled.

Anko nodded. That was about what she expected from the boy. Everyone in the village probably knew about his goal, and the ones who didn't were probably deaf. "You next," she said, pointing to braid boy.

"'Kay! My name's Ishida Fuyuki, but I've always thought that 'Ishida' was a little clunky, so just call me Fuyuki. I'm fourteen, but only 'cuz I started the Academy a couple years late, so it's not like I don't know my stuff! I've got pretty good chakra control, and my sister's been teaching me some genjutsu and stuff, so I guess that'd be my best skill," he paused. "I'm not so great at throwing weapons—I can hit stationary targets okay, but moving ones are a huge hassle, and my goal is to one day be in a history book, 'cuz I think that'd be pretty neat!" the boy smiled.

"Alright," said Anko, "what about you?"

"I'm Suzuki Setsuna. I'm twelve. I like puns, and I dislike being called generic." At this, she glared at Uzumaki. Anko figured there was a story there, since Uzumaki looked slightly guilty. "My best skill is probably stealth, and my worst is speed. My goal is to reach jōnin."

Anko nodded. "Excellent. I expect all of you to work hard. If I even suspect that any of you are slacking off, I'll drop you from the program."

"Yes, sensei!" chirped Uzumaki. "What kinda missions are we gonna go on? I want to do something cool like save a princess!"

"Well we've prolly got to train some before we take on any cool missions," hummed Fuyuki. "What's that gonna be like, sensei?"

"Figured we could meet up on weekdays—I like to have weekends off," she shrugged. "In the mornings we'll do some training, then we'll break for lunch, and then we'll do some D-ranks. Sound good?"

"That sounds great, Sensei, but aren't you going to test us?" asked Suzuki. She seemed terribly confused, such that Anko almost felt a little bad for her.

"You heard about that, huh?" The second test was supposed to be kept secret, but it wasn't unheard of for a few kids to catch on—either told by doting family members or coming to the conclusion themselves

"Wait, what do you mean by that?" asked Uzumaki. "What test?"

"Only three new Genin teams are supposed to be formed every year, so traditionally a second test is given to root out most of the teams," explained Anko. She would've loved to test this team—that would've been fun.

"What? I thought we'd already graduated!"

"You have. I decided not to give a second test."

"What?" If possible, Suzuki looked even more confused than before.

She shrugged. "I'm getting a promotion out of this, so I'm not gonna risk losing it. That's just common sense."

"Hey, Sensei, why were you promoted to teach us?" asked Fuyuki.

"The old man's been trying to get me to take a team for years," she lied. "The promotion was a bribe, basically."

"Wow! You must be pretty good then if the old man wants you to teach so badly!" said Uzumaki.

Heh, she was starting to like the brat. "Hell yeah, I'm fantastic! Have you guys eaten yet? We could get some dinner, my treat."

"Yes! I'm starving!" cheered Naruto.

"Great, let's go then! Team Anko, roll out!"

Which was how the newly formed Team Four in its entirety found themselves at an Okonomiyaki place that Anko frequented because it was cheap and near her apartment. Uzumaki had chattered the whole way there, with Fuyuki occasionally interjecting with a comment. Suzuki was mostly quiet, but there was an air of lightness about her that hadn't been there before.

"So," said Fuyuki, once the entire group had their food cooking, "I know about you guys' ninja skills 'n stuff, but what do you like to do for fun?"

"I like to come up with cool ideas for pranks!" said Uzumaki, bouncing around in his seat. "There was this one time I caught like ten people in a paint balloon trap and that was great! I also like to water plants and stuff, but that's probably not as interesting," he laughed, scratching the back of his head nervously.

Huh. Perhaps she could do some work with him on traps? After all, pranks were a bit like traps, just with less bloodshed. And if he liked plants, he might be good with poisons. _Excellent._

"What about you, Setsuna-san?" asked Fuyuki when it became apparent that she wasn't going to answer without being prompted.

"Hm." After a long pause, Suzuki answered. "I sew. I'm not particularly good at it, but my mom's a tailor."

"That's cool! My parents were farmers, but they always got too attached to the animals to send them to the butchers," he laughed. "So your mom's a tailor—is your dad a Shinobi?"

"Yes, he's a jōnin."

Anko examined the girl and found herself almost immediately making a connection. "Suzuki Shou, right?" she asked. Anko had spent a couple years doing work around T&amp;I, and they worked closely with Sparrow's unit. She wasn't really supposed to know his identity, but that had gone out the window when some prisoner recognized him and threw a fit. The girl seemed to have inherited his controlled aura, if not his controlled hair.

"Yes, do you know him?" she asked, a slight tilt of her eyebrow the only thing indicating her surprise.

"In passing," said Anko. Which was, of course, a lie. Sparrow was one of her favorite people to work with, both because he took her seriously, and because he was smart as hell. Smarter than a Nara, even, and far less lazy. "We did a few missions together during the war, when I was just a chūnin. He's pretty clever; he could trick even the most cautious ninja into giving away information."

The girl smiled openly for the first time that Anko had seen. Clearly, she looked up to her father a great deal. Perhaps he was even the reason she wanted to be a ninja in the first place. She filed that little insight away for further use.

Fuyuki suddenly made an odd face. "You know, I thought it was just something at the academy, but I've been smelling ramen for like the past five hours."

There was a short moment in which the ever-moving Uzumaki went still, very clearly holding his breath.

"...Clearly it's my perfume. I'm trying to attract a mate," Suzuki deadpanned. "Soon enough the ladies will be falling at my feet. My fan club will surpass that of even the Uchiha's. Thanks, Uzumaki."

"Uh, sorry again, Setsuya," Uzumaki squeaked. "I didn't mean to spill my breakfast on you, but I didn't even notice you, honest!"

Suzuki twitched. "We were in the same class for five years. _Five_."

"Well, I mean, you're kind of plain…"

Anko was half-tempted to let the kid dig his grave even deeper, but then she remembered that if her kids killed each other she wouldn't have a team, and if she didn't have a team, she didn't have a promotion. "Your food is burning, Fuyuki," she said, aiming to distract.

"Huh? No way! Why does that always happen to me?"

Well, at least she wouldn't be bored.

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* * *

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When Setsuna returned home that night, her parents were in the living room, laughing together in the strange way that they did. Her mother had a laugh like thunder, but her father laughed more with the set of his shoulders than with sound. To the untrained eye, he probably looked unamused.

"I'm home," she called out, toeing off her shoes and replacing them with her house slippers.

"Welcome back! Come in here, I want to talk about your day!" called her mother cheerfully. Her parents were seated on either side of a shogi board, playing a game that her mother was clearly winning. Setsuna entered the room and walked over to the shogi table, taking a seat on the side. Her mother could win in three moves, but she didn't seem to realize that, because she didn't go for the move Setsuna would've, instead setting up for a different play that she was sure her father would see coming from a mile away. "So, today's the day you got assigned to a genin squad? Enlighten your poor civilian mother—is that a permanent thing?"

"It's all up to the team really—some people choose to get reassigned when one of their teammates achieves chūnin without the others, but some stick together until they retire."

_Or until one of them dies._

But she was better off not telling her mom that.

Her mother was a lovely woman, and Setsuna respected her, but she was clearly not a kunoichi. In fact, she represented exactly what a kunoichi _wasn't_. She was kind, trusting, and overall very warm, where a kunoichi should be unyielding, cold, and suspicious. Setsuna had no doubt that her mother knew about the dangers that being a ninja entailed, but only in an abstract sort of way. Her mother seemed the type to just not think about that sort of thing at all, instead preferring to dote on her husband and daughter when she had the chance.

"Well, go on then, who are your teammates? Is Ino-chan on your team?"

"No," said Setsuna, sighing sadly. "I wish. My teammates are Ishida Fuyuki and Uzumaki Naruto. It's not the end of the world, but they're not who I would've picked."

"Oh? Why's that?" asked her father, moving a shogi piece into a place where her mother would easily take it.

"Ishida is too nice, and Uzumaki is too loud. If I had the opportunity to choose…" her first thought was to say Ino, but while the girl might be her best friend, she was also far too concerned with her looks to take being a shinobi seriously. No, if she'd been given the opportunity to choose, she'd have wanted someone strong and dependable to watch her back. "I would've picked Inuzuka and Aburame. But, I can work with this team, I think. It could've been worse," she shrugged.

"So, about the Uzumaki boy," her mother began. She looked strangely pensive as she moved the complete wrong piece. Now it would take her ten moves to put her father in checkmate. "Does he behave?"

What an odd thing to ask. Why was she concerned about Uzumaki and not Ishida? Out of the two, Fuyuki was probably the bigger threat. He didn't _look_ strong, but he was older than her, and apparently knew enough genjutsu to qualify it as his best skill. Uzumaki? Well, he was just the dead last.

She hummed, "I mean, he has a tendency to prank people, but I think that was more of a boredom thing than anything. He_ did_ say I was generic, which was rude, and then he called me Setsu_ya_…and he also spilled his breakfast on me this morning…"

"Boys that age tend to be callous in general, I wouldn't take it personally," said her father. He moved another piece into a place where her mother could easily capture it. This time, however, it wasn't a simple pawn, but a general.

Her mother didn't take the general, opting to take out the pawn instead.

"Seriously mom? What are you doing? You could have won ages ago," Setsuna frowned. Her mother simply laughed.

"Oh Setsuna, you silly girl. Shogi isn't about winning, it's about learning how another person thinks." Which, okay, Setsuna wasn't really sure she believed that. Games were played to be won, after all. "That, and I think your father is very cute when he tries to out-smart me. Speaking of, I'm not making gyoza tomorrow, so you can stop trying to trick me into it."

Her father chuckled, but in a ninja sort of way, which isn't like chuckling at all. "Well, it was worth a shot."

Her mother stretched, looked at the clock, and frowned. "Are you going to be out this late every day? I thought that was just a dad thing, not a Shinobi thing in general…"

Setsuna shrugged. "Our sensei was late to meet us—apparently there was a last minute change of plans." She wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but the scantily clad woman hadn't elaborated on it. "She took us out for dinner to make up for it."

She wasn't sure about her sensei. She'd wanted someone strong, but her sensei had only recently been promoted, and she had a very honest disposition, which seemed counter-intuitive for a ninja. Why would she even mention all that stuff about being promoted just to teach them? What would she gain from that?

"Who did you get assigned?" asked her father.

"Some lady called Mitarashi Anko. She seems alright, but she doesn't really strike me as the teacher type…" She would've loved to have Ino's sensei—he seemed pretty skilled, _and_ he was the Hokage's son.

"Ah, I know Mitarashi-san. She's a rather accomplished kunoichi, though you probably wouldn't guess it by looking."

"Yeah? I guess she's pretty cool," Setsuna said. Well, if her father approved, then Mitarashi-sensei was probably okay. "She seems willing to teach us, anyways, if only because she's getting a promotion out of it."

"Well, I hope things turn out well for you," said her mother. "Are you going to be out tomorrow?"

"Yeah, she wants to meet us at eight, and then if we're not too tired we'll do a mission, and then I'll come home."

"You should try to be home in time for dinner—I'm not used to eating alone."

"Sure mom, I'll try. I should be getting to bed though…"

"Ah, right, you ninja and your early mornings. I swear, if you're ever up at four, I might just have a heart attack."

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* * *

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"Kurenai~" Anko called out. Said woman was sitting at their usual spot in the bar next to Asuma, and, for some reason, Hatake Kakashi. Anko draped herself over Kurenai briefly, and then unceremoniously pushed Asuma out of her usual seat.

"You could've just asked me to move," grumbled Asuma.

"You could've just chosen a different seat. This one is clearly mine—it's even got my name on it." She hopped off the stool and flipped it to show the bottom, where her name was, in fact, scratched on. "See?"

"It's good to see you, Anko," Kurenai chuckled.

"Yeah, yeah, pleasantries and all that," said Anko, waving a hand dismissively. "I have a very important question."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, how do you raise children?"

Several people within earshot choked on their drinks. _'Whoops, I probably could've phrased that better.'_

"Anko, please tell me you're not pregnant," said Kurenai, wide-eyed.

"No, no, not at all! Can you even imagine?" she laughed. "The Hokage's asked me to take a genin team."

"You?" asked Asuma. "Why?"

"Because I'm the best teacher Konoha has to offer, duh."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"… Alright fine, geez. Can none of you take a joke? Apparently there was some sort of last minute change of plans or something?"

"It's funny that you should say that," said Kakashi, "because my team got swapped around last minute."

"Oh? Who was supposed to be on your team?" asked Anko.

"Uzumaki, Haruno, and Uchiha."

"Huh. You didn't complain about Uzumaki, did you?" asked Anko. She didn't think Kakashi was like that, but then, he _had_ changed quite a bit since making jōnin. "The kid's a brat, but he doesn't seem so bad, really."

"No. It's the strangest thing, too. I figured he was placed on my team because I have the sharingan."

"That'd make sense. In fact, your whole team would've made sense… So why did they get swapped?" asked Asuma.

"It must have something to do with the other three, then," said Kurenai. "Who are they?"

"No one too important, I don't think," said Kakashi. "I've got the boy who used to be the Hamada heir before he got skipped over."

"Hm. I've got Suzuki Setsuna—she's a second gen shinobi—and then Ishida Ami's kid brother."

"Huh. You think maybe they're trying to set the Uchiha up to fail?" asked Asuma. "I mean, Uzumaki might've been dead last, but he probably wouldn't be an awful teammate, what with his _unique_ abilities."

"Plus, I've seen Hamada's file," said Kurenai. "The kid's disciplinary record is huge."

"Mm, it's possible," said Kakashi. "Hamada and Uchiha both have bad attitudes, and Haruno's too infatuated to be much use. I might have to fail them just on principle."

The group was silent for a long moment.

Anko sighed. "Well, either way, I know jack-shit about teaching. Do you have notes or something I can use?"

"I have a few pointers," said Kurenai. "Kids that age are pretty insecure, so you have to be supportive."

"Hold on, hold on, let me take notes," said Anko, grabbing a handful of napkins from the dispenser and pulling a pen from her coat. "Okay, shoot."

"Well, first off, you should probably take note of their individual strengths and weaknesses."

"Oh! Check, I already did that! I asked them."

"You should probably test them—most of the time a genin's self-assessment isn't quite on the mark."

Anko sighed, scratching out the checkmark. "Alright, give them an assessment of sorts. What should that include?"

"I'd probably test the basic three—ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu—though they're not likely to know much. After that I'd do a physical assessment. Maybe check how fast they are, what kind of distance they can run, how agile they are, etcetera. An accuracy test of some sort wouldn't be remiss. You might also want to have them track you, though it sounds like your team won't be particularly skilled in that area, since the academy doesn't teach a lot about it."

"... Okay, how do I test all of that?"

Kurenai hummed and proceeded to give a long, detailed lecture on how to properly evaluate genin. Anko pretended not to notice the other two sensei taking notes, though really, they should've been prepared already. Honestly, it wasn't like they didn't know they were taking on a team weeks ago.

When Kurenai finished, Anko shook out her hand and sighed. "This almost isn't worth the promotion."

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* * *

.

Fuyuki was late coming home. Well, later than he should've been, even with his sensei showing up late and all.

He'd stopped to pick up some food from a street stand to give to Atsuchi, and then he'd noticed a cat that looked very hungry, so he fed her, too, only to get accosted by a group of harried looking genin that included a very strange boy with the thickest eyebrows he'd ever seen.

The other boy seemed to think he'd been hiding the cat from his team, and that he was trying to kidnap her for ransom. Apparently, she was their mission objective, so he handed over the cat, but it still took some time to convince the boy that he didn't have nefarious intentions.

After that, he'd gotten sidetracked in the alley by Atsuchi, who was trying to convince him to drink with him as a celebration for passing his genin exam. Then, the man was intent on giving him advice, and Fuyuki saw no reason to refuse, since the guy _was_ really old, and apparently successful enough that he survived through two wars.

Unfortunately, his advice consisted of cryptic statements, most of which could be simplified to "avoid the smoke".

So, when he finally walked through the door, the sun had set and Ami was pacing around in the kitchen.

"I'm home, sorry I'm late!"

"Jesus Christ, Fuyuki, did you get stuck in the mud or something? It's like ten o'clock! Have you eaten yet? How'd your team meeting go?"

"Sensei was super late, so she bought us dinner. Did I worry you?"

"Nah," she said, obviously lying. She flopped onto their beat-up couch and patted the seat next to her, sprawling out over him when he sat. "So, you passed the second test?"

"You knew about that? Well, I suppose you would, since you're a chūnin and all…" he said, nodding thoughtfully. He wondered if Setsuna's dad had told her about the test or if she'd figured it out on her own. Ami hadn't told him, probably because it was supposed to be secret, and she was only a chūnin. A jōnin almost certainly wouldn't give up secrets any easier. Not to mention that Anko-sensei had made it seem like this 'Suzuki Shou' guy was as tight lipped and apathetic as Setsuna appeared to be.

Nah, it was more likely that she'd figured it out on her own. He'd have to be careful around her if he wanted to hide any secrets.

"Anyways, I guess I passed the test, in a way."

"Oh?" Ami snorted. "Only 'in a way'?"

"My sensei didn't give a test. She said she was getting a promotion out of it, so it'd be dumb to risk us failing. Dunno why she doesn't just take the jōnin exams—it'd probably be easier than teaching."

"Ah, but teaching is more rewarding," said Ami, who was a teacher herself, and so maybe just a little bit biased. "Well, I guess you lucked out, then. I failed my second test the first time around—one of my potential teammates set me on fire," she laughed. "It wasn't funny at the time, but now it's kind of hilarious. We ended up on the same team after remedial year, and I held it over his head for the longest time."

"Which of your teammates was it?" he asked, idly adjusting the ungraded papers on the side table so that the pile was neat.

Ami didn't speak of her genin team often. They used to come by with her when she went to visit him and their parents at the farm, but he was too young at the time to really remember much about them, and for whatever reason, they didn't visit her now. As a child, both had seemed unapproachable to him; one of them had been impossibly large, and had a booming voice to match, and the other had always looked like he'd smelled something gross.

"Tatsuya," Ami answered. Fuyuki thought that he was probably the smaller one. "He was always taking things far too seriously, but Choukuro was good at getting him to laugh…" Her smile turned bittersweet, and Fuyuki suddenly realized why they didn't ever come by.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know."

"I miss them." She placed her grading pen lightly on the table and tucked a strand of caramel colored hair behind her ear. She only ever tucked her hair behind her ears when she was going to try to teach him something important, so Fuyuki knew to listen carefully. "A good Genin team sticks together forever. You don't go through life or death experiences with someone without coming out as family. That's why… That's why I never quit being a ninja, even when mom asked me to. She was scared I'd get hurt, but when my team was together, it was like nothing could touch us, you know? And then when Choukuro…" she trailed off.

"I'm really sorry, Ami."

"Me too… But, I hope you can have that, with your team. That level of trust and camaraderie is worth having, even for just a little while. Promise me you'll look out for your team, okay? Even if you're scared."

Fuyuki nodded, his back straightening in resolve. "I will."

And he meant it.


	5. Inauspicious

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Setsuna's luck runs dry. Naruto makes some friends.

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* * *

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Inauspicious

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* * *

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Naruto wasn't sure how he felt about his new team.

For one thing, he'd wanted to be paired with Sakura-chan, but instead the girl was paired with that asshole Sasuke. Then it turns out the bastard's sensei is some legendary ninja! What was it? Sharing Gun Katashi? Something like that, anyways.

He stared angrily at his boiling breakfast. '_Well, whatever, my sensei can probably kick Sasuke's sensei's ass!'  
_  
She had to be strong if the old man picked her specifically to teach his team! She was probably a legendary ninja too, way more legendary than that Katashi guy! She'd even stopped the restaurant owner at that place from kicking him out. When the guy came over his sensei just gave him a _look_ and he went away without even saying anything! How cool was that?

Maybe he'd ask his teammate if Anko-sensei was legendary. He'd known about Sasuke's sensei, and also about the old man's student, so he probably knew about their sensei too! Plus, he didn't seem to mind explaining stuff so Naruto could understand it. Maybe they could even be friends…

That was another thing. Fuyuki seemed nice, but his other teammate was _weird_. At first, he thought that the guy didn't like him, since he spilt ramen on him or whatever, but then it sounded like he wasn't all that bothered by the soup. He'd even joked about it! At least, Naruto thought he'd been joking…

But then that was just it, wasn't it? He was hard to understand! It was like Iruka-sensei was forcing him to do math all over again. Plus, there was something about him that made him hard to tell apart from everyone else. It wasn't Naruto's fault that his teammate was just as generic as the guy who'd helped him with his door!

Speaking of his door, if he wanted to be on time to his meeting, he had to head out.

He'd tried to fix his door last night, like the guy had suggested, but he still wasn't sure if he'd actually made it better. There was only one way to find out. Luckily, his door opened just fine, and he'd already finished his breakfast, so there was nothing he could spill as he threw his hands up in the air and cheered.

He started walking towards town with a skip in his step. He'd never noticed before, but his neighborhood was kinda creepy in the morning since there was nobody out and about. All of the kids were already at the academy, and the drunks never liked to get up until passed noon, so he was the only one walking. His own echoing footsteps were starting to freak him out, so he ran to the meeting place as fast as he could.

The result of this was that he ended up being half an hour early. He couldn't help it; he was just excited about finally being a real ninja, and he didn't have time for silly things like 'walking', or, more accurately, 'scaring himself'. Fuyuki had said that they probably wouldn't do any cool missions until they had some training, but maybe they'd get to do something awesome anyways!

Surprisingly, he wasn't the only one early.

"Good morning, Naruto-san!" Fuyuki greeted. The older boy was sitting on the bench that the team had decided on as a meeting point. He had a huge book open on his lap, which reminded Naruto that he had questions to ask him.

"Morning! Hey, so you know how you said Sasuke's teacher was a legendary ninja?"

"Yeah, Sharingan no Kakashi. What about him?"

"Well, I was wondering… Our sensei is totally better than him, right?"

Fuyuki hummed. "Well, Anko-sensei is listed as a B-rank Shinobi in the bingo book, but sometimes the best Shinobi are the ones you never hear about. Personally, though, I think she's prolly way cooler than Kakashi. Like, he seems like kind of a jerk."

Naruto scratched his chin thoughtfully. "He did call Sakura-chan an idiot."

"Mm," Fuyuki nodded. "I hope things work out for them, though. Touya-kun's not so bad once you get used to him, and I know you like Haruno-san."

Unsaid was that Sasuke was a total bastard, but _everyone_ knew that.

The other boy closed the book on his lap and began to dig through his bag before pulling out a spiral bound notebook. "You wanna play tic-tac-toe?"

"Sure!" chirped Naruto. "Um, but I don't really know how…"

"You've never played tic-tac-toe? How come?"

Naruto shrugged uncomfortably. "Never really had anyone to play with…"

"Well, you do now," said a new voice. Naruto looked up in surprise; he hadn't even heard anyone approach. It was his other teammate, Suzuki Setsu-something. "Most Genin teams end up as friends—I know my dad still talks with his old team."

"Are you—are you saying you want to be friends?"

He'd never had friends before. Most kids tended to avoid him because their parents didn't like him. He wasn't sure he even knew how to be a friend. Was there like, secret handshakes or something?

"Listen, that was about the saddest thing I've ever heard. You've struck a chord in my feminine heart. There's just no way I'm going to say no to that," said Setsu, face as unreadable as ever.

Feminine heart…? Wait a second. "Ne, Setsu, are you a girl?"

Even the birds seemed to go quiet. Fuyuki was looking in between him and Setsu with wide eyes. After what seemed like an eternity, Setsu made a sound that might have been a cough but also might have been a laugh. "…Well, I'm not a boy. I'm not generic either, for that matter."

Fuyuki laughed, breaking through the leftover tension. "Geez Naruto, you must be crazy lucky. Imagine what would've happened if you said something like that to Haruno-san."

Naruto felt a shiver go down his spine. No, that wouldn't have been good. "Ehehe, sorry?"

Setsu waved him off, "So, tic-tac-toe, huh?"

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* * *

.

Setsuna was not a morning person, by any means. She had hoped after leaving the academy that her sensei would be reasonable and set their meeting time at, say, noon. Unfortunately, because things never seemed to go her way, their official team meeting time was eight AM. This was only marginally better than the academy meeting time, and Setsuna was quite annoyed.

Of course, because god hates her, both of her teammates seemed to be morning people.

Uzumaki was just as loud, if not louder, than he was on a typical afternoon, and Fuyuki only made it worse by giving him someone to chatter to. Not that she could blame him. She'd only walked up in time to hear the tail end of their conversation, but it was still enough to know that Uzumaki needed _someone_ to talk to.

Despite her cold exterior, Setsuna couldn't deny someone in need of a friend.

She remembered the way that the other girls told each other to avoid Uzumaki, citing their parents as the reason. At the time, Setsuna had figured it was because he was a known prankster, but the end result just seemed cruel.

She thought about how it was before Haruno and Ino stopped being friends—no one talked to her, no one wanted to play with her. If Haruno hadn't ditched, the pink haired girl would likely still be Ino's best friend, and Setsuna would still be the weird one that people only tolerated because she let them copy her homework. But Setsuna had always had her family to fall back on; Uzumaki wasn't so lucky.

At the very least, she could attempt to be friendly. If he turned out to be a jerk, then she'd just be a jerk right back.

"Goood morning~!"

Setsuna flinched. Truly, she must be Konoha's most unlucky genin. Mitarashi-sensei, it seemed, was also a morning person.

"First test—meet me at training ground four! Ready, set, go!" she yelled, abruptly disappearing in a burst of leaves.

_Just when I think it can't get any worse._

Suzuki Setsuna was good at more than a few things—she'd been the top female student, so that was only to be expected. However, speed was not one such thing.

Immediately, the boys were faster than her. It seemed that no matter how hard she willed her legs to move, she just couldn't catch up. When she finally burst into training ground four, red faced from a mixture of embarrassment and exertion, her teammates were already there, and had been for at least a minute.

Mitarashi-sensei raised an eyebrow.

"I'm, uh, not very fast," she admitted. She half expected her new teacher to say something like 'I'd noticed' or 'you'll never be able to keep up with the Shinobi lifestyle' but surprisingly, the purple haired woman just shrugged.

"Eh, everyone's got something they're no good at. We'll work on it. So!" she clapped, "What kind of chakra control exercises do you guys know?"

"I can do the basic three," said Fuyuki. "That's leaf sticking, tree climbing, and water walking, in case you guys didn't know."

"I can do the leaf sticking exercise," said Setsuna, "I've never tried the other two."

"Um," said Uzumaki. "What's catra?"

Mitarashi-sensei twitched. Setsuna might not have noticed it, except for the fact that her father did the exact same thing whenever someone said something particularly unbelievable.

"Didja miss the lesson on that?" asked Fuyuki. He didn't seem to be judging Uzumaki in any way; he just kept on his warm smile. "Chakra is the energy that ninja use to power techniques."

"Oh!" said Uzumaki. "Yeah, I knew about that! I can't do any of those things though…"

"Like I said, everyone's got something they're no good at," said Sensei, although she didn't look like she believed it. She marked some things down in a little black notebook that she seemed to have pulled from thin air. "So, who's up for some sparring! Taijutsu only, no weapons—try not to kill each other."

"Sweet! Sounds like fun! Can I go first?" cheered Uzumaki.

"Sure," said Sensei. "Why don't you spar with Fuyuki?"

Just as well. As far as Setsuna could tell, neither boy was particularly good at taijutsu. The girls had never been allowed to spar with the boys, but she was fairly confident that she could take them both down easily. Hopefully when it was her turn she could impress Mitarashi-sensei enough that she forgot about how slow she was…

"Ready set go!"

Fuyuki stood still, holding his ready position and waiting for Uzumaki to make the first move. Already, Setsuna could pick out faults in his stance. He was off balance, and a good hit would cause him to lose his footing. However, a quick glance confirmed that Uzumaki was just as bad, if not worse.

"Who do you think will win?" asked Mitarashi-sensei, leaning casually against a tree.

Good question.

Their forms were equally awful, but Fuyuki appeared to be the weaker of the two. The way he dodged around hits that he could've easily blocked also seemed to tell a story. Vaguely, she remembered Fuyuki being awfully sickly as a child. Perhaps he was still suffering from whatever condition had befallen him.

"…Uzumaki-san. His form is awful and his strategy is simple minded, but Fuyuki-san's hits aren't damaging him. This'll turn into a battle of attrition, and Uzumaki-san has the upper hand there."

"Fair enough, but it seems like he's having difficulty hitting him. Why do you think that is?"

"Fuyuki-san's form is just as awful, but he's got the advantage of having larger reach. Uzumaki can't get close enough to hit him. But he still won't win—he can dodge his hands just fine, but his footwork is sloppy. He's either going to trip, or get kicked off balance."

Mitarashi-sensei nodded. "That's an accurate assessment."

At that moment, Fuyuki took a painful-looking blow to the side and rolled a good few feet. He was winded and couldn't get up fast enough. Uzumaki quickly had Fuyuki's back on the ground, and was holding his foot above the older boy's throat.

"Please don't break my windpipe—that would be awfully inconvenient," said Fuyuki.

Uzumaki laughed, offering a hand to pull him to his feet. "I wouldn't! Not to a teammate, anyways."

The boys shared a grin as they clasped fingers. As far as she could tell, neither was badly injured. Fuyuki was breathing a little harder than was typical, but Uzumaki seemed to be raring to go.

"Are you good for another fight, Uzumaki?" asked Mitarashi-sensei, probably noticing the same thing.

"You bet! Me against Setsu, huh? I've never really fought a girl before."

"I'm sure it'll be a lot like fighting a boy," said Setsuna, gliding to stand across from him.

She supposed she couldn't blame Uzumaki for being rude. It wasn't like he'd been forced to take etiquette classes like the prospective kunoichi had been. But, if she hit him a little harder for it, well, that was just part of training, wasn't it?

Unsurprisingly, Uzumaki opened with the same move he'd used against Fuyuki: a straight charge. Setsuna, however, was fully prepared for that. She stepped aside at the last moment, allowing Uzumaki's momentum to carry him forward so that he overextended. Then, it was a simple matter of knocking him to the ground and pinning him.

The fight had lasted all of ten seconds.

Mitarashi-sensei blinked. "Well, that was fast."

Setsuna offered her hand in the customary Seal of Reconciliation. The two clasped fingers and Uzumaki scowled. "Don't take it too hard," she said, feeling the need to reassure the blond. "I've worked really hard on my taijutsu with my father, since I figure I won't be fast enough to run away. I can give you a few pointers later?" she offered. If she was going to go on missions with these boys, they'd have to do better than they were in order to watch her back. About the last thing she wanted was to come home in a body bag because her teammates couldn't hold their own.

"Cool!" cheered Uzumaki. "You guys are way nicer than I thought you'd be!"

"Aw, how adorable! My cute little Genin are making friends~!" cooed sensei. "Also, I'm about to throw things at you; get ready to dodge."

Setsuna stared blankly. Were those… Live weapons? Of course she'd end up with the crazy sensei. Maybe living vicariously through Ino wasn't such a bad idea after all.

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* * *

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Suzuki Hisako was no stranger to her daughter's special form of melodrama.

There was no doubt that her daughter shared her husband's blank disposition—that much was obvious from just a glance—but she somehow hadn't inherited his type of humor to go along with it. Instead, the girl had her mother's tendency to exaggerate things so out of proportion that it somehow turned into a joke. The hilarity of such a thing was only magnified by the girl's ability to hold a straight face.

Once, she remembered fondly, she'd had to attend a meeting at the school about Suna's "mental state" because she'd come in last place during a race and declared seriously that she was going to break her own spine so she could zip past her classmates in a wheelchair. On another occasion, Yamanaka Mei had tracked her down because she was concerned that Setsuna was horribly upset at Ino after overhearing Suna say something to the effect of 'How dare you betray our friendship in this way? This treachery is so deep and painful that I might never recover.' Turned out, Ino had just placed a draw four card while they were playing Uno.

So, when Suna came home looking distinctly ruffled, but otherwise unharmed, she didn't make a big deal out of her daughter dropping bonelessly onto the floor in front of her.

"Rough day?" she asked, stepping over the girl to place her basket of laundry onto the table to be folded.

"Leave me here to die," she whined, voice muffled by the floor.

"I would, but you're smelly. I do have to eat in here, you know. Help me fold the laundry?"

"Mother, please, I've been turned into a pin cushion."

Hisako glanced at her daughter and blinked. "Do you have a needle sticking out of your shoulder?"

Suna sighed, "Probably. I thought I got them all. You want to pull it out?"

"Why do you have a needle stuck in you? I thought you were just training?" she asked, still stuck on the 'my daughter has an abnormally large needle sticking out of her body' thing.

"I was. You know, agility training?" Suna said, sitting up and stretching. "My teammates were way worse off. Fuyuki-san looked like a porcupine."

Hisako had never understood the desire to be a shinobi. It was undoubtedly something Suna had picked up from her father. The girl was always doing some form of training, whether it was jogging around town or practicing kata in the back yard. Now, apparently, she'd be coming home covered in training injuries and acting like it was no big deal.

There were some times when Hisako wanted to pull her family into her arms and get them the hell out of Konoha, out of danger, but she knew enough to know the two of them would be miserable. This was their life, whether she liked it or not.

So, she toughened up and pulled the needle out.

"Do I need to repair your clothes?" Suna's jacket and pants were built specifically with the Shinobi lifestyle in mind, but she thought she'd ask anyways.

"I don't think so. It was just senbon, not kunai."

"Well, good thing it was only a couple, then!" She pretended not to notice the way Suna's expression turned slightly sheepish. More than a couple, then.

Hisako knew what her husband would say. She could practically hear him saying 'A little hurt now is less so later.'

"I thought your teachers weren't supposed to use real weapons?" was what she said instead.

"They're not supposed to at the academy. Our jōnin sensei can do whatever she wants." She shrugged, as if she hadn't just admitted that her teacher was allowed to actually hurt a twelve-year-old girl. "She says she usually has poison on her weapons, so we'd better learn to dodge quickly. I'm doing better than my teammates; she actually had to try to hit me," Suna said, smiling proudly.

"Well, keep up the good work, then," said Hisako. What were you supposed to say when your daughter was training so that she could put herself into danger? For lack of anything better, she settled on: "Go take a shower. When you're done, come into the kitchen and help me with dinner; we're having gyoza."

_A little hurt now is less so later,_ she reminded herself as she watched her daughter skitter off.

Her husband's teacher had told him that. It was sort of funny that Shou, for all that he hated the man, would still parrot pieces of his advice. She remembered how angry he'd been when he first told her about his sensei.

'_He ditched Mei and I to train our third teammate. He said we'd never be strong enough to match up with him,'_ he'd said, more bitter than she'd ever heard him. It had been that bit of emotion that led to her wanting to hear more from him. She'd wanted his careful monotone to go away around her like it did when he was angry. And somehow she'd managed it, which led to her situation now, as an immigrant with a daughter who took after her father perhaps a bit too much.

But, of course, the melodrama was all her.

Her eyes wandered to the half prepared gyoza in the kitchen, and she was struck with a sudden realization. "Has my husband grown more intelligent than me? Oh dear god, strike me down where I stand! I can't go on like this!"

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* * *

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Ishida Fuyuki was a little worse for wear, but his cheery grin didn't fade. It seemed like he'd really made a lot of progress in befriending his teammates. He figured Naruto wouldn't be so hard to convince, but he hadn't really expected Setsuna to give in right away. He supposed he thought it would be harder because he was almost always around Touya when he'd tried to talk to her before, and Touya was, admittedly, kind of an asshole.

But it truly hadn't been so hard. Naruto was practically desperate for friends, such that playing a simple game with him had been more than enough to win him over, and apparently Setsuna wasn't as cold hearted as he'd thought, because Naruto had only just begun his sob story when she announced that they were going to be friends.

Then, the three had stayed together in the clearing after Anko-sensei took off. They'd pulled out most of the senbon that their sensei had hit them with, and then Setsuna had helped them both with their taijutsu, and after that, Fuyuki had shown the other two some chakra control exercises.

Overall, it'd been a productive day.

He wasn't even bothered by all the senbon, really. It was a small price to pay for the beginning of the camaraderie his sister had described.

Unconsciously, his feet had led him to Touya's house. Well, that was only to be expected. Habits were hard to break, and he'd nearly always gone to Touya's house after school. It couldn't hurt to visit.

He rang the doorbell and heard it chime through the large house. Moments later, his green-haired friend opened the door.

"What are you doing here?" he scowled.

"Hiya, Touya-kun! Long time no see!"

"I saw you yesterday, idiot."

Fuyuki shrugged. Touya hadn't moved to let him in, but it was easy to duck around the boy. "But I almost didn't see you today. Is your mom home?"

Touya sighed in resignation. "No, she's out. Come into my room—if you get dirt on the furniture she'll be angry."

The Hamada household was always unnaturally clean. There were no signs of the typical wear and tear a family might produce: no dust on the shelves, no plates in the sink, not a single scratch on the hardwood floor. The place also gave off the feeling of being empty, no matter how many people were in it.

It was creepy.

Whenever he could, he tried to drag Touya over to his apartment—it might not always be clean, but it always felt like home. Homes weren't meant to be cleaned with clinical precision. Of course, whenever he brought him to his apartment, Touya spent the first hour or so cleaning and complaining that it was a pigsty, which really didn't earn him any points with Ami, but that was beside the point.

Fuyuki flopped into Touya's desk chair. "So, Uchiha and Haruno, huh?"

The green haired boy sighed, taking a seat on his bed with perfect posture. "Yes. We had our second test today. We did well."

Which was, of course, Touya speak for 'we almost failed.'

"What kind of test did your teacher give you?"

"He had two bells. We had to get them," he said shortly.

"So, like a teamwork test?" asked Fuyuki. This seemed to be the wrong thing to say, however, because Touya fixed him with a harsh glare.

"What a stupid concept! Of course it wasn't about teamwork! Only the weak need to work with others!"

Which roughly translated to 'yeah, it was a teamwork test.'

"I don't think that's true," said Fuyuki. "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Synergy, and all that."

"Yeah, whatever," Touya glowered. "What kind of test did you do?"

"Sensei threw senbon at us; I feel like a hedgehog," he chirped. He knew that wasn't really what Touya was asking, but if he told the boy that Anko-sensei hadn't given them a second test, he'd be furious.

"How was that a test?" Touya crinkled his nose.

"She wanted to gauge our abilities, I guess," he shrugged.

"And how'd you do?"

"Okay, I guess. She didn't fail us, at any rate. Turns out that Setsuna-chan is something of a taijutsu expert, and Naruto-kun is a chakra _demon_. She said that with a bit of training, we'd be a great strike team. You know, I catch them with genjutsu, Setsuna-chan hits them, and Naruto-kun destroys them with ninjutsu."

Touya huffed. "The dead last and the idiot? Your sensei is just pulling your leg. The only thing you're destined for is eternal D-ranks."

"You hush, our sensei doesn't pull punches—if she thought we sucked, she'd tell us."

Fuyuki ignored Touya's disbelieving snort. He knew that Touya didn't really mean it. Underneath all of his smug assholeness, the green haired boy was kind at heart. A lot of the times, when he said something mean, he was only trying to be helpful. For example, if Touya delivered milk to an old woman, he would say to her: 'Why are you buying unpasteurized milk you uncultured swine. You should know better, or are those wrinkles just an illusion?' but in his head, he would be thinking 'Poor woman doesn't know that unpasteurized products are harder for her to digest. I should let her know.'

He was just, you know, a little rude.

"Who is your sensei anyways?" Touya asked, calling Fuyuki's attention back to him.

Well, that was easy enough to answer. "Mitarashi Anko. She studied under Orochimaru."

Touya blinked. "Suzuki is afraid of snakes."

Fuyuki laughed. For all that Touya 'hated' Setsuna, he also knew her better than almost anyone. He'd be willing to bet that if he asked, Touya would even know her favorite color. "She'll be okay, I think."

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* * *

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"Good morning my precious students! Today I've brought along a little friend to help with your poison resistance training! Remember, he can smell fear!"

"… Bury me with my books." Konoha's most inauspicious genin hit the ground in a dead faint.


	6. Surprisingly not an Aburame

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Team Four completes their first D-rank.

Notes: Shorter chapter, sorry. Naruto's perspective is unexpectedly hard? Also, I'm a little impatient to get to the good stuff—there's not a lot of conflict between the characters yet so it's kinda just "eh". Truly, I can't wait until I've properly established their friendship so that I can tear them all apart.

I've also got to show Anko teaching them things but it's like? I imagine the training is fairly routine. "Here, strange apathetic child, go run like forty laps." "Blondie, climb that tree using chakra. When you're done with that, work on your stances." "Braids, seriously? The hell is wrong with your aim? I'm not letting you leave until you can hit that log." But I still have to write it anyways, so I suppose I should get on that train and not get off until I've firmly established where Team Four's excellent improvement is coming from.

If you're interested, I've put out some stat sheets that tell you what everyone's good at. The link is in my profile.

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* * *

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Surprisingly not an Aburame

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* * *

.The next day had a slightly dizzy Team Four reporting to the missions desk for their first D-rank.

Anko's specialty was poison, so it only made sense that she'd try to impart that knowledge onto her cute little genin. Helping another person build up resistance to poison was something that Anko had done before—she was the reason that a large percentage of ANBU operatives were immune to most common strands of poisons—and she was confident she could do the same with her genin without hurting them. Most of the resistance came from the chakra network: if you poisoned yourself enough times, your chakra began to act as a shield between the inside of your body and the poison you ingested. Since the resistance was mostly chakra based, she could start the kids on it without worrying about harming their physical development, given that their chakra coils were already matured.

The only one unaffected by the strongly diluted poison she'd given them had been the Uzumaki brat, which was as unsurprising as it was disappointing. Out of the three, Uzumaki was the loudest, so his whining probably would've been hilarious. Of course, it was just as amusing to watch him flutter around his teammates, trying to help them but ultimately making it worse.

Suzuki's face was tinged green as the blond turned around to face his two teammates, worry clouding his eyes, only to turn back again. "Uzumaki-san," she said, staggering down the hall as if she'd had too much to drink. "I swear to god if you don't stop moving like that I'm going to rip my own eyeballs out."

"Huh?" said the blond, again turning around to face the girl. "But how'll you be a ninja with no eyes?"

Fuyuki groaned, rubbing at his temples. "You stop that. Just. Be quiet."

"You sure you still want to take a mission?" Truthfully, it didn't matter to her. As far as she was concerned, training a team was mission enough for her. Her objective was to get the three brats up to chūnin standard in a little under six months. Whether or not they took missions was irrelevant.

Suzuki straightened up as a red-faced chūnin rounded the corner and blew past them, trailing sheets of paper behind him. After he passed, she began to slouch again. "We're already here. It'd be inconvenient to go back now."

"Ugh, what she said," agreed Fuyuki, tugging at his braid and making it even messier. "We'll prolly just be doing some sort of chore, anyways."

"Eh? Chores?" Uzumaki paused in the middle of the walkway, causing Suzuki to stumble into him. Instead of backing up, the girl leaned forward against the frozen boy.

"Move," she ordered. "I've been through a trauma and I want to go home as soon as possible."

Anko bit back a laugh. The girl was afraid of snakes, which sucked for her, but was comical for Anko. She'd get over it eventually. If she complained, Anko would just say it was training—ninja did things they were scared of all the time, and the kid would need to get used to it if she was serious about her career.

"Okay, but what do you mean by 'chores'?" The baffled look on Uzumaki's face was incredible. It was too bad that Suzuki and Fuyuki had ties to the shinobi world; she'd been told that breaking the news about what D-ranks entailed was the best part of taking on a brat squad.

"D-ranks are missions with little to no danger, and typically don't involve leaving the village. It's stuff like babysitting and finding lost pets," explained Fuyuki. It seemed that not even mild poison could stop the kid's helpful nature. She would have to wait and see if that would cause problems. She supposed it would depend on what he wanted his specialization to be. There was room for kindness if you were, say, a medic-nin.

"What? That sucks! I want to rescue a princess or fight bandits!" Uzumaki pouted. Fortunately, all further complaints were halted by the team's arrival at the missions desk.

"Team Four reporting for duty!" Anko chirped. She pointedly ignored the disbelieving looks the two chūnin manning the desk were giving to her students. "What 'cha got for us?"

The pair shared a look that practically screamed 'can you believe this shit?' and then the one on the left coughed and began to adjust the mission scrolls laid out in front of him. "There's harvesting at Sousuke's farm, babysitting, dog walking, or grocery shopping. Take your pick."

"Did you say dog walking?" Fuyuki perked up. "I love dogs!"

Good thing, too, because it turned out "dog walking" meant "walk the dogs from the Inuzuka shelter", which, judging by the looks on their cute little faces, was a bit more then they'd been expecting. The team approached the shelter where a woman with crutches was holding the leads for ten dogs, all in varying states of disbelief.

"You're here to walk the dogs? Good, here you go, we usually walk them around the park on Blossom," said the woman, handing the leads to Anko and walking back into the shelter without further ado.

Anko turned to face her students wearing what she was sure was a predatory grin. "So, dog walking, huh?"

Suzuki stared at the dogs, and then back at Anko and declared serenely, "I'm going to cut off both of my hands."

Anko snorted. What an odd kid. She reminded her of Hatake, just a little bit. "Yeah? How are you gonna manage to cut the other hand off after you've done the first?"

She turned her gaze towards the sky, "This plan was not well thought through. Ninja wire, maybe?" she shook her head, and then instantly looked like she regretted it. "Alright, game plan. Uzumaki-san, you said you could do shadow clones, right?"

Uzumaki grinned, "Yeah! I can make a bunch!"

"Can you make seven? The clones'll take the bigger dogs, Fuyuki and I will get the smallest ones?"

"Sure!"

Anko watched in surprise as several clones popped into existence. She poked one experimentally and found that yes, it was actually a shadow clone. Uzumaki chuckled embarrassedly and dismissed the extra clones so that there were only seven.

He was… Overloading the jutsu? If he'd been trying for seven and then accidentally made more... She felt her grin turn feral.

'_The other jōnin won't be able to resist the challenge if I bet them that my genin can complete more D-ranks than theirs… I'm going to be a rich woman._' She cackled evilly, rubbing her hands together.

"Um, Sensei, are you alright?" asked the kid.

"I'm better than alright, brat!" she grinned. "Taking on this team is the best decision I've ever made!"

Things were falling into place even better than she expected. When she'd heard her team was thrown together last minute, she'd been worried that they'd all be pathetic. Other people evidently thought that too, because over the past two days she'd heard no less than ten people commenting on how 'that boy' and 'two clanless losers' had been assigned to 'the sleeper agent', obviously so that they'd be killed on their first mission. Clearly, though, those people had been wrong. Her team was surprisingly well-balanced. Hers would be a team with very little, if any, infighting. Uzumaki was incapable of holding a grudge, Fuyuki was too understanding to have a problem with anyone, and Suzuki was far too passive to start fights.

Aside from having good temperaments, her team was also surprisingly skilled.

Uzumaki Naruto was energetic, rude, and resilient as hell. Even after an hour spent dodging senbon, he was nowhere near winded. His taijutsu was awful, and his chakra control was even worse, but she hadn't missed her other students offering to give him some pointers. However, the boy wasn't totally pathetic—even without being able to throw a solid punch, the boy could take a hit. Being able to take hits meant he was suited to the front lines of combat, and added to his crazy large chakra supply, the boy had the makings of a ninjutsu specialist. Anko could have him throwing around A-rank techniques in no time.

Ishida Fuyuki wasn't pathetic either. Despite being smack dab in the middle of the class, Fuyuki was almost frighteningly intelligent. You couldn't tell it just by listening—he phrased things in a way that had people dismissing him as dumb. Anko was no stranger to that particular talent, but whether or not he was doing it on purpose was still up in the air. Much like Naruto, his taijutsu was subpar, but he didn't have the pain tolerance to handle hits (yet). But the boy might not ever need to get in a fist fight—Fuyuki was excellent with genjutsu. Anko wouldn't be surprised if he one day surpassed Kurenai in that field.

Alongside the boys, Suzuki Setsuna could hold her own. Many girls her age were more concerned with boys or friends or clothes than with their ninja training, but Suzuki was maybe a little too focused on it. Most kunoichi specialized in ninjutsu, genjutsu, or really anything other than physical fighting, but Suzuki was clearly well on her way to being a taijutsu specialist. She was also good at analyzing situations, if the fact that she'd figured out the second test on her own was any indication. If Anko could get her speed training up to snuff, she could probably give Gai's genin a run for their money.

A ninjutsu specialist with an endless supply of chakra sealed in his stomach, a genjutsu specialist with a tight grasp on the details of the real world, and a taijutsu specialist with a solid understanding of strategy. All that, **_and _**their personalities were compatible.

It would clearly be smooth sailing all the way until they reached chūnin. She would have her promotion, the brats would have theirs, and she wouldn't even have to bond with them! They were self-sufficient in a way her own genin team never was. She was willing to bet that if she threw training scrolls at them, and maybe some weights for the girl, they'd reach chūnin level all on their own.

Whoever said this genin training shit was hard clearly didn't know what they were talking about.

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* * *

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Ishida Fuyuki loved dogs.

When he was younger, he used to try and sneak strays into his and Ami's apartment. He couldn't help it—big or small, fluffy or sleek, all dogs were adorable. He even thought that the hulking, battle-scarred ninken that was Inuzuka Tsume's partner was adorable. Even now that he was older, he had to fight the urge to run over and pet every dog he saw.

Ishida Fuyuki was allergic to dogs.

His eyes would start itching first. This symptom was ignorable with a little willpower. Next, his nose would get stuffy. This was far more annoying than itchy eyes, but was also easily ignored. The real problem began when he started to wheeze. If he wasn't careful, the wheezing would turn into an asthma attack, and then he'd have to use his inhaler, which his teammates would probably make fun of him for. What kind of a ninja had asthma, anyways?

It had been a lot worse when he was younger. He'd had to learn special techniques to coat his lungs and airways with chakra before he could even leave his house. Unfortunately, or perhaps, only fortunate for him now, the techniques had required great chakra control, and it had taken him until he was nine to perfect it. His allergy to dogs was regrettable in that it was the only allergen that his chakra couldn't totally block.

Pollen? Alright. Dust? A-okay. Smoke? Tolerable. Dog hair? Woah there, buddy, slow your roll! Clearly this is a toxic substance and to deal with it we're going to make it hard to breathe!

'_Useless lungs.'_

And so, despite his affection for dogs, even he had to admit that accepting a dog walking mission while already ill was not the smartest thing he'd ever done. But he couldn't help it! Ami wouldn't let dogs come anywhere close to the apartment! In his defense, at most he thought there'd be three dogs. Instead, there were around ten in varying sizes.

When they'd realized how many dogs there were, Setsuna had threatened to cut off her own hands. He was starting to realize that the girl's deadpan melodrama was both her way of joking and a way for her to pause and think, because immediately after, she proceeded to come up with what she called a "game plan". The game plan involved Naruto's sudden ability to summon solid clones.

Solid clones. _Solid_.

Naruto was supposed to be the dead last, but Fuyuki knew that solid clones took a massive amount of chakra to make. For him to make seven clones was frankly impressive, and he'd made _more_ than that originally. He'd professed his ability to use the jutsu the day before last, during his introduction. At the time, Fuyuki had dismissed it as irrelevant, but clearly Setsuna hadn't. And boy, was he glad she remembered. The use of clones to walk the stronger dogs while Fuyuki and Setsuna stumbled along with the smaller ones was probably what saved him from dropping dead halfway through.

But still, by the time the team finished walking the dogs and started walking towards the tower, his head felt like it was going to explode, and his wheezing had gotten to the point where he was contemplating pulling out the inhaler anyways.

"Ne, Fuyuki, are you okay?" asked Naruto.

Which, okay, fuck Naruto. Turned out the guy didn't need poison resistance training, since by some stroke of luck, he was _already_ resistant. Fuyuki was maybe a little uncharacteristically bitter, but it was easy to be bitter when you were nauseous and on the brink of an asthma attack.

"My life is made of snot," he wheezed.

"Eh? That's not a symptom of the poison," said Sensei. She eyed him carefully, as if he was going to drop dead any second.

He wondered if they'd stop him from accepting dog related missions if he told them he had allergy related asthma. He didn't want to take that chance."... My sister has a cold right now. She probably passed it to me." He squashed the bit of guilt that accompanied the lie. Dogs were worth a little subterfuge.

"A cold?" Naruto hummed. "You know what's good for colds? Ramen!" he said, bouncing on his heels. This was good to see, because the blond had been oddly subdued all day. "There's this ramen stand in town that sells the best ramen and the old man and his daughter are super nice!"

"I don't have any money on me," Setsuna shrugged. Naruto drooped noticeably. She stared at the blond for a moment before sighing. "But we could go by my house. If we go straight there after reporting in, my mom won't have started dinner yet, so she'll make whatever."

Naruto perked up. "Even ramen?"

"Yeah, even ramen. She's pretty cool. You can come too, if you want, sensei," she offered.

Anko-sensei waved her off with the same wide grin she'd been wearing when Naruto made all those clones. "No, no, you three enjoy your team bonding exercise. I've got things to do. You think you guys'll be alright reporting in on your own? The symptoms should be wearing off by now."

Fuyuki had barely gotten out a "sure, we'll be fine," when the woman disappeared in a flurry of leaves.

"Well, that was abrupt," said Setsuna. "If I die in the next hour or so, tell my parents it was Mitarashi-sensei's fault."

"What do you think she's doing?" asked Naruto. "Must be pretty important if she had to leave so quick."

"Did you see her face when you made all those clones?" asked Setsuna. "She was pretty gleeful. She probably went to brag."

"Brag? About me?" Poor Naruto looked like someone had tried explaining quantum physics to him. "But why?"

"Imagine how many missions we can complete with those clones. Way more than the average genin team."

Fuyuki nearly tripped over his own feet. If they could do more missions than other teams, then they'd be making more money. If they made more money, he could maybe pay the bills for Ami. If he saved enough, they could even fix their window, or move to a different part of town. They'd always been short on cash, in between his medical expenses and her inability to take missions outside of the city. If Naruto could help their team make a lot of money…

Well, then he was glad to have the blond as a teammate.

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* * *

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Naruto had never been invited over to someone's house before.

He was sure there were rules about that, but he didn't know any of them, so he was a little nervous. That, and he didn't know how his teammate's parents would react to him. He knew a lot of his classmates' parents had told their kids to avoid him, and those kinds of people would have no qualms about kicking him out.

Part of him wanted to say he couldn't go, and then head to Ichiraku's.

But another, larger, part of him wanted Setsu's parents to like him. If they did, he could maybe come around more often, and he'd have two new adults that accepted him. Maybe they could even be like a family… Iruka-sensei had said that genin teams were supposed to be like that. Plus, he could get a home cooked meal made by someone else, which he'd never really experienced before.

Sure, the orphanage had fed them, but all the food there had always tasted funny to him.

He wondered what Setsu's mom would be like. Would she be just as hard to read as her daughter? For some reason he pictured her as being tall and wearing sunglasses and frowning a lot. Or maybe Setsu's parents wore masks like Sasuke's sensei. That would explain why Setsu didn't make facial expressions.

And so he sucked up his nerves and ended up walking together with his team to Setsu's house. She lived way out in the middle of the woods on the opposite side of town from where their mission had been. The path to her neighborhood was lined with towering trees, and the houses were much farther apart than Naruto was used to. He'd never been so far out in the suburbs before! The woods were really quiet except for birds, and there was no one out walking the path, even though people had to be getting off work soon.

"My family's property starts right here," said Setsu, pointing at a tree that was thicker than the rest and surrounded by these weird little flowers. "It's faster to cut through the trees than to follow the road."

Naruto was really surprised when they got to the house and it wasn't a huge mansion. He'd thought that since her family apparently owned this gigantic piece of land that her house would be gigantic too. Instead, it looked like it was only a single floor. Setsu led them to the side door, instead of walking up the stairs to the front stoop, and let herself in.

Naruto hesitated before following her. This was his last chance to refuse. He could make up an excuse and run back to the village… Before he could turn around and leave, his other teammate, Fuyuki, patted him on the shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile.

Well, he couldn't say no to that.

Immediately, he was struck by the smell of citrus and cinnamon. Oddly, the two scents seemed to meld together perfectly. The room they entered into seemed to be a cross between a mud room and a pantry. He could hear someone humming quietly across the house. The walls were wood paneling, and instead of hardwood flooring, like he could see the room over had, the room was carpeted. There were a few paintings hung on the walls, but they hung a little askew in a way that sorta made it seem more like a home.

"Shoes off here. The blue slippers are mine, the brown ones are my dad's, take your pick from the rest," Setsu said to them. Then, louder, she called out, "I'm home!"

"Welcome back!" Called a cheery, feminine voice. Somehow, he'd expected any family of Setsu to speak in the same bland, unreadable way. "Do you have any thoughts on dinner?" Setsu opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off before she made a noise. "And come in here before you answer! We're civilized people who don't yell across the house to have conversations, young lady!"

"If she didn't want to have the conversation across the house, she shouldn't have asked the question from the living room," Setsu grumbled. "Come on, I'll introduce you guys."

She led them through another door into the kitchen, which was bright and open in a way he could never get his apartment to be. Then she took them through an archway into her living room. The walls in were covered in family photos, but they were mostly of Setsuna, and occasionally, for some reason, Ino. In the middle of the room was an expensive looking game board of some sort. There were two comfy looking couches and an armchair, where Setsu's mother was sitting. She looked like she was fixing some sort of cloak.

Setsu's mother looked nothing like he'd thought she would. She had eyes that were happy, despite their dark color, and weren't obscured by any form of eyewear. She wasn't wearing a mask either—her face was like a children's book, open and easy to understand, and her skin was really dark. Her hair wasn't neat like he expected, but it wasn't crazy like Setsu's either. It was long and thick and wavy. He wondered if her hair would look like Setsu's if she cut it short…

The lady glanced up when she heard them enter.

"I brought guests," said Setsu.

The woman grinned. "I can see that."

"These are my teammates, Uzumaki Naruto and Ishida Fuyuki."

She nodded. "Nice to meet you! Welcome to our home!"

"Thank you for having us, Suzuki-san," Fuyuki said. The older boy bowed and elbowed him so that he'd follow.

The woman laughed a bubbly laugh, "There's no need for that. We've never been big on formalities. Call me Hisako, please. My husband, Shou, is at work—he might not be back for dinner, but he'll be just as thrilled to meet you! He's really big on the 'genin teams are friends for life' thing."

"Is he?" asked Setsu, flopping down onto the couch. "Then I guess I am too. That means we're friends forever, so try not to be massive jerks."

"That simple, huh?" Setsu's mother laughed.

And maybe it was. Naruto had been worried that maybe everything that happened the day before was a dream, worried he'd wake up and find out he'd failed his exam. He didn't want it to be a dream. Fuyuki was nice—they'd played games the day before while waiting for their sensei, and then after Anko-sensei had released them for the day, he'd helped him pull out the senbon he couldn't reach, and then he'd taught him how to do the leaf sticking exercise. Even Setsu was nice in her own way. She didn't hit him except when they sparred, and she was helping him with his taijutsu even though she didn't really have to. They didn't mind helping him, just like Naruto was already their friend. That simple.

"Hey, Mom, could you make ramen for dinner? Fuyuki has a cold or something."

Hisako nodded decisively. "Sounds good. I'll get started on that. Why don't you three play a game or two?"

Well, that decided it. Setsu and Fuyuki and him were going to be friends for life. Anyone who could get him ramen was good in his book!


	7. The Uzumaki Mystery

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Setsuna tries to sole a mystery.

Notes: This chapter was just, like, literal hell to write. I spent like a week trying to edit it, and I'm still not happy with it. Still, I swear it's not filler, even though it kind of seems like it at first. It's also mostly in Setsuna's perspective, which is a real struggle, because how do you get across the fact that a character has the worlds strongest poker face without resorting to adverbs after every "she said"? How do you show that they're unhappy without saying "she frowned"? (With a lot of pain, suffering, and internal monologuing.)

Also, I know Japanese streets don't have names but I'm taking artistic license

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The Uzumaki Mystery

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The day was hot, and the warmed air carried with it the promise of even warmer days to come. Konoha was likely to experience a drought in the coming weeks, but at the moment, the wind blew at just the correct temperature so as to make the heat bearable. The village was bustling with people going about their weekend chores, and wherever you went, you could smell the enticing smell of street food. The park on the corner of Eve and Young, even with its close proximity to the ninja training fields, was practically filled to the brim with family picnics and screaming children.

Suzuki Setsuna tossed a ball into the air and caught it with her left hand. Again, she tossed the ball, again, she caught it, this time with her right. Something about the pattern of _whoosh, swipe, whoosh_ was hypnotic to her, which was, in fact, the effect she'd been aiming for.

She had a lot to think about.

In between her intense training and her heavy mission load, she'd hardly had time to do _anything,_ much less try to puzzle out a mystery. She had a sneaking suspicion that the next week would see her in much the same situation. It seemed like she would have to do all puzzle solving on her days off. So that was what brought her to the park. As much as she loved her mother, if she'd stayed home, she would have been forced to do housework with her, and she couldn't very well tell her own mother not to talk to her when she was in the same room.

_Whoosh, swipe, whoosh._

She'd been a part of Team Four for about a week now, and so far they'd managed to complete 14 D-ranks, where the typical team only did around five. The other genin teams were scrambling to keep up, but despite their efforts, they were still far behind her squad in terms of productivity. Even her father, who was oftentimes unaware of her small achievements, had taken time out of his busy day to congratulate her team on breaking the record for the most missions completed in a week. If her team continued on their current track, they'd likely get a C-rank before the month was up.

But all in all, that wasn't that strange. Setsuna strived for greatness in everything she did, so to be the best at D-ranks was already something she was expecting.

No, what was odd was the way that nearly 75% of their clients had tried to turn them away after taking one look at her team.

As a rule, clients weren't allowed to ask for another ninja team once one was assigned to them. When they paid for a mission, that rule was one of the first in the contract, right after "don't lie about the danger level". They had to know about that rule, so why had they been outraged when they couldn't get a different team?

_Whoosh, swipe, whoosh._

Her first thought was that it had to be because of Mitarashi-sensei. It was possible that the villagers disliked her because of her connection to Orochimaru. He was considered one of the worst traitors Konoha had produced, right after Uchiha Itachi. Her sensei had been his apprentice. It probably didn't help she gave off the sort of unhinged shinobi vibe that civilians hated.

_Whoosh, swipe, whoosh._

Then again, civilians never really experienced Orochimaru's terror. Sure, they were probably all horrified when the news of what he'd done spread through the village, but they weren't personally involved in the conflict. Not in the same way shinobi were. His "experiments" were mostly done on orphans or people who no one would miss, and he hadn't killed any civilians when he fled. Logically, that meant that civilians probably weren't harboring any grudges strong enough to hate his student just by association.

_Whoosh, swipe, whoosh._

Were they angry with one of her teammates, then? She knew Fuyuki was well liked in the village—his friendly nature endeared him to most anyone he came across—so it couldn't be about him. That left Uzumaki. He was a well-known prankster, but if that was all it was, wouldn't refusing his hard work be a little extreme? Especially since none of his pranks were ever harmful; they were mostly just good natured fun. She could even admit to laughing at some of his more elaborate pranks.

_Whoosh, swipe, whoosh._

The more she thought about it, the more she was sure this was connected to him. In the past week, she'd learned most of her original assumptions about the blond were just plain wrong. This, in turn, made her curious as to why she had made such baseless assumptions in the first place. The answer came easily to her: she had made her assumptions based on the way other people spoke about him, and not the way he actually acted.

When people talked about him, it was always "Uzumaki Naruto, the troublemaker," or "Uzumaki Naruto, the dead last," or even "Uzumaki Naruto, the annoying dunce." No one ever had anything nice to say about him. It just didn't make any sense—Uzumaki could be all of those things, sometimes, but he wasn't all bad. In fact, he made an excellent teammate.

Amazing, even.

She wasn't afraid to admit that it was because of him that they did so well on their missions. His ability to make solid clones as a genin was both impressive _and _useful. Most jōnin didn't even have the chakra necessary to make as many as he could in one go.

On top of that, the way he learned things was just _incredible_. Although his academic knowledge was severely lacking, he devoured new information in the same way he devoured miso ramen. As soon as a concept was explained to him in a way he understood, he never had to ask again. For example, she'd corrected his stances _once_, and she hadn't seen him mess them up since then. She'd also seen Fuyuki showing him how to perform the leaf sticking exercise on Wednesday, and on Thursday she'd watched Uzumaki keep a leaf stuck to his forehead for the entire day. Mitarashi-sensei even told him that if he kept up with the chakra control exercises, she'd teach him an A-rank ninjutsu. _A-rank_! Most genin struggled with the weakest C-ranks! It seemed as though the blond had learned more in his first week as a shinobi than he had in the four years he spent at the academy. He was practically the perfect student!

So why was it that he hadn't learned a single thing from the academy?

'_It just doesn't make sense,'_ she huffed, tossing the ball higher than she meant to and ultimately being too slow to catch it. It bounced off her forehead protector with a solid _thwack_ and rolled just out of her reach.

"God damn weights making my arms slow," she grumbled. She eyed the tennis ball balefully. She wasn't going to get that. If the wind could just blow it slightly in her direction...

She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, she was staring into neon yellow.

The devil's true form was an ugly orange cat with a ribbon on her ear.

"... You're not my tennis ball," she said, blinking and looking away. If she pretended she didn't see the cat, maybe it would leave. "We just caught you yesterday, you hellspawn. How'd you get out again?"

"Meow?" said the cat, which probably translated to something like 'That fat old woman couldn't keep me captive with even the strongest pentagram.'

"I'm off duty, leave me alone."

The cat purred and rubbed up against her hand. "Ah, I see how it is. I'm not gonna return you, so you're just going to get your orange fur all over my jacket." _'Better than being shredded to pieces, I guess.'_ Tora crawled up on Setsuna's chest and made herself comfortable. "Why is Uzumaki-san not recognized for his potential?" She asked the cat.

"What potential?"

Setsuna jolted upright, causing Tora to hiss in displeasure and dig her claws into her shirt. Surprisingly, the feline didn't take off, probably because she was used to being manhandled. She squinted against the sunlight, but couldn't make out who the three silhouettes in front of her belonged to. "God? Is that you?" she addressed the boy who'd spoken

The boy laughed boisterously. "You're funny," he said. "Setsuna, right? How come I've never talked to you before?"

"Well, when you've got the whole scope of the universe to consider, I'm nothing more than a fleeting moment." A convenient cloud passed over the sun, allowing her to discern the identity of the boy in front of her. "Hello, Inuzuka-san, Hyūga-san, Aburame-san. Are you by chance looking for the actual devil in the form of a tabby cat?"

Inuzuka let out another bark of laughter. "Yeah, that's our mark. I'm sure she's not all bad."

"You're wrong. This cat is a creature of hell. Yesterday she nearly clawed Uzumaki-san's eyes out."

He snorted, "Sounds about right. Dead last can't even catch a cat without getting his ass kicked."

Setsuna bristled. In her head, she knew the Inuzuka didn't mean any ill will. After all, he and Uzumaki had frequently skipped class together. Most likely, he was just poking fun at the blond, but it felt wrong when the guy wasn't even there to defend himself. "Uzumaki-san is a good teammate and an excellent ninja."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are we talking about the same guy here? Uzumaki is an idiot, everyone knows that."

"That's just the problem, isn't it?" she asked, adjusting her grip on the now struggling cat. "Everyone knows he's an idiot, but one week of hanging around him and I already know he shouldn't have been dead last. The way he learns things is remarkable. He easily could've been top of the class, so why didn't any of the teachers take a moment to really teach him?"

There was a beat of silence.

"Perhaps they didn't educate him because he skipped class frequently," said Aburame, adjusting his sunglasses. "Such a habit would make it difficult for even the most gifted instructors to teach him. Why? Because their lessons are structured to be consecutive, and as a result of that, skipping one lesson puts you far behind par."

"U-Um, Naruto-san didn't start skipping class until third year," Hyūga stuttered.

Setsuna hummed. "That's when we had Yuri-sensei."

Yuri-sensei was probably the worst teacher that Setsuna had ever had the misfortune of being in class with. She was short tempered, and notorious for giving out the worst detentions. Unless, of course, you were a clan kid. In that case, she tended to look the other way when you broke rules. For whatever reason, the woman especially hated Uzumaki. She gave him several detentions for 'asking dumb questions," even when the questions weren't dumb at all.

Actually, now that she thought about it, she couldn't recall anyone else actually receiving an unjust detention from the woman… Usually, they were doing something she didn't like, not just participating in class.

That put things into an interesting perspective. There was no way that Yuri-sensei and Uzumaki had interacted before the academy, since the woman had only just come back from a long-term mission when she'd become a teacher. Was it possible she'd had a problem with Uzumaki's parents? Was it possible _everyone_ had a problem with Uzumaki's parents? That would explain their hatred of him.

But, as far as she knew, the Uzumaki clan was respected. They were scattered when Uzushiogakure was destroyed, but before then they were a powerful family with strong ties to Konoha. The first Hokage's wife had even been an Uzumaki. Could it have been his parents in particular that did something awful? It made more sense than any other theory she'd come up with, but she couldn't help but feel like she was missing something.

Fuyuki would probably know if the Uzumaki clan disgraced themselves somehow.

Would it be rude to visit her teammate on their day off? Guess that depended on how much he liked her… But then again, she couldn't imagine Fuyuki turning her away even if he hated her. He was just too nice of a guy. However, that still left the problem of _finding_ him. It wasn't like she had any idea where he lived, and the only one who might know was the one guy who hated her more than anything else.

… But she _really_ wanted to figure out why people hated Naruto.

There were very few things that could get in her way when she wanted to figure something out, and for all that she hated him, Hamada Touya was not one of those things.

With that in mind, she handed over the actual devil to the Hyūga heiress, and started making her way to Hamada's house. It had been a long time since she'd been there, but you didn't walk the same path for eight years without having it memorized. To get there, she had to walk past her own house, and she spared a wave to her mother before continuing on.

The Hamada clan compound was like its own city. The only clan that could've rivaled the Hamada's for self-sufficiency was the Uchiha clan, but since they'd been wiped out, they were uncontested for "biggest loner clan". Even the Aburame regularly left their compound for chores, but not the Hamada. The clan had their own farms, their own training grounds, their own merchants, restaurants, and doctors, all within walls that rivaled Konoha's main gates for thickness. Setsuna had fond memories of sitting on top of Hamada's roof and watching people go about their daily business—she used to pretend that she was a queen, and every last colorful house and market stall was her kingdom—but that had stopped when Hamada became a pretentious asshole with a superiority complex.

The clan was horribly isolated. When he was younger, still the heir, and not as much of a jerk, Hamada had sworn that would be the first thing he changed about his family. But then his uncle Jirou had taken over the clan and declared his son, Kichirou, as the clan heir instead of him. Which, really, he kind of deserved. The way Setsuna saw it, any person who thought they were better than other people just because they had status deserved to have that status taken away from them.

As she approached the gates, a tall green haired man called out to her. "Hey! Suna-chan, is that you?"

She stared at the man for a moment before abruptly realizing who he was. He'd gotten taller since she'd last seen him. "Hello, Gou-san, it's good to see you. You're still guarding the gate?" It'd been around three years since she'd last come by, and at that point he'd been a year away from graduating medical school. She'd seen him a couple of times since then just to hang out, but she'd never asked him about his job.

Gou sighed. "Yeah, lucky me, right? I have my medical license and everything, but Jirou-sama wants me here since I'm still technically a jōnin."

God, were the Hamadas _all_ fucked up or what? Gou had wanted to become a doctor ever since he'd graduated from the academy. From what she remembered, he'd even been good at it. He was the one who'd saved her leg when Kichirou had pushed her off Hamada's roof in a fit of rage. If it wasn't for Gou, she wouldn't have ever been able to become a ninja in the first place.

"That's not fair," she said. It was more than unfair; it was cruel and stupid. Gou was far more useful as a medic-nin than a gate guard.

"Tell me about it, kid." He squinted at her in a way Setsuna had always associated with him getting a bad idea. "You know," he started. "Kichirou-sama always liked you. He still grouches at Touya-kun for telling you not to come by anymore."

She snorted, "Kichirou never _liked_ me; he just liked picking on me." _He pushed her off a roof! _And that wasn't even the half of it! On one memorable occasion, he'd woken her up by throwing a garden snake on her, and on another, he'd tried to drown her. She wouldn't ever search him out willingly; he was an even bigger jerk than Touya.

He shrugged, "But, you know, I bet if you asked him to talk to his dad…"

With her luck, he'd probably end her ninja career if she tried, but it really wasn't fair that Gou was still working the gate. Surely there were other jōnin in the clan who could take over? "... I'll think about it," she said finally. "Is Touya in?"

Gou nodded, but his lips pulled into a frown. "He's here, but he's in a hell of a mood. I thought he was going to break his door off its hinges with the way he pushed it open. I sent his messy friend over there to try and calm him down about a half an hour ago, and as far as I can hear, he's _still_ raging."

His messy friend…? "You mean Fuyuki-san is here?" What a lucky break. She could think of a thousand better things for Fuyuki to do on his day off, but if he wanted to hang out with Hamada, that was his business. It made her life a little easier, at least.

Gou looked taken aback. "You know that guy?" He shook his head. "Weird kid—I woulda ditched Touya-kun years ago with the way that brat treats him."

"Mm, Fuyuki-san is probably too nice for his own good. I was actually here to ask Touya where to find him, so I guess it works out."

"Oh? Is he your boyfriend?" Gou teased.

"Close," she said. "He's my teammate."

"Teammate, huh?" He blinked in surprise. "Man, I could've sworn it was just yesterday you were here yelling about getting accepted into the academy."

"Careful there, Gou-san," she said, "You're starting to sound like an old man."

"Yeah, yeah," he chuckled, waving her off, "Go see your teammate or whatever. Try not to antagonize Touya-kun—if he punches you, it's your own fault."

As if Hamada could ever lay a hand on her. She might not have been able to run fast, but she could duck out of the way quicker than almost anyone in her class. Regular sparring with a Hyūga was good for that. Getting hit with even one of those attacks was incredibly painful; it was best not to get hit at all. Hamada's taijutsu had nothing on Hyūga's.

Setsuna could hear Hamada complaining as soon as she turned on to his street. Surprisingly, it wasn't because he was particularly loud; rather, he'd left his windows open. From what she could hear, he wasn't all that happy with his team. Apparently his sensei was a "no good pervert", Uchiha was "an arrogant bastard" (like he was one to talk), and Haruno was a "useless fangirl". Not for the first time, Setsuna thanked whatever god there was that she'd been placed on Team Four with Uzumaki and not Hamada. She didn't doubt that whatever amount of complaining he was doing now, he'd be doing double that if they were on a team together.

She'd only just tapped the door when Hamada flung it open. Whatever he was going to say was lost as he stared at her. The expression of surprise on his face only lasted for a moment before his sharp features contorted into a scowl.

"Suzuki. What do you want?"

Not exactly the warmest welcome. She wasn't really all that upset about it, though. It was about what she'd been expecting from him, since he was apparently raised in a barn and so had no manners. "I have to ask Fuyuki-san a question."

"Come back later," he huffed. "You've seen him every day for the past week."

"I need to talk to him," she said, taking care not to let her frustration show. What were they doing, anyways? She could tell that the entire house reeked of bleach, even just standing on the front stoop.

He pretended he didn't hear her. "How'd you get in here anyways? I banned you from the compound years ago; the guards shouldn't have let you in."

"Are you gonna call them on me?" she asked. She wouldn't be surprised. "Don't be an asshole, Hamada; I need to talk to my teammate."

Fortunately, whatever he was going to say next was cut off as Fuyuki peered around the door that led into the kitchen and spotted her. She didn't recognize him immediately—Fuyuki was usually very unkempt, but that didn't seem to be the case today. His braid, which was typically very loose and messy, was perfectly even, without a singular hair out of place. He wasn't wearing the green jacket that he normally wore—in fact, he wasn't wearing green at all! She supposed he was dressed that way so he wouldn't look out of place in Hamada's house, which was impeccably neat. Still, seeing him look neat for once was oddly unsettling, and she much preferred his usual gear.

"Setsu-chan! What're you doing here?" He looked genuinely glad to see her, unlike Hamada, who was _still_ glaring.

"Looking for you, actually. I wanted to ask you something."

"Yeah? What's up?"

"What do you know about the Uzumaki clan?" she asked, cutting straight to the point. The less time she had to spend around Hamada, the better.

"Eh? Um, I mean, we wear spirals on our uniforms 'cuz of them? They were pretty important way back when, since they were like really good at fūinjutsu, I guess. Like, they were so good that other hidden villages decided to destroy their entire country, because, I mean, isn't that just a logical escalation of force," he rolled his eyes. "Since their home was wrecked, the Uzumaki clan scattered and most went into hiding. A lot of them came to Konoha, 'cuz Konoha and Uzushiogakure were allies."

"He answered your question, now get out," grumbled Hamada, moving to slam the door shut, but Setsuna was faster.

She caught the door with her foot and continued on as if nothing had happened. "So they haven't done anything to disgrace themselves?"

"Probably not, I mean, if they had, we'd get different uniforms, right?" he said, eyeing Hamada with exasperation, but otherwise ignoring the fuming boy. "Is this about Naruto-kun?"

"What gave it away?" she said flatly. "I'm trying to figure out why people treat him so oddly."

"And you figured it had to do with his family," he nodded, seeing the logic in the conclusion without it needing to be explained. "I don't think it has anything to do with the Uzumaki. It's more likely that it's just an honorary name, 'specially since he was born around the time Kyuubi attacked."

So, in actuality, she wasn't any closer to solving the Uzumaki mystery than she was before. Truly, her life was a struggle. Not that it was really important—whatever was going on with Uzumaki almost certainly had nothing to do with her. It probably wouldn't affect her at all, but she _hated_ mysteries. Part of the reason history had been her least favorite subject was that it was all so frustratingly vague—she didn't understand how Fuyuki could read all those history books without wanting to pull all his hair out.

It was just part of shinobi nature to want to hide things, she supposed, but it did make for a lot of unanswered questions.

"I'm going to punch the next person who tries to refuse us a mission," she stated.

Fuyuki laughed, "Yeah? I'm sure that'll go over well with Hokage-sama."

"I'll just run away and become a missing-nin," she shrugged. "Maybe I'll join a carnival—when the hunters come after me, they'll be too amused by the show to take me back."

Hamada released a heavy sigh. "Great. Question answered. Get out of my compound."

'_It's not exactly your compound anymore,'_ she thought. However, she had one more question to ask, so she decided it was probably best not to voice that particular complaint. "Do you know where I could find Kichirou-san?" She asked instead.

She shouldn't talk to him, in all honesty, but she was rather fond of Gou, and she _did_ owe him a favor.

Hamada finally dropped his glare and replaced it with a decidedly confused expression. "Kichirou? What do want from him?"

"Oh, you know, I was feeling a little nostalgic, thought we'd catch up," she said, not meaning a single word of it. The moment she felt nostalgic for Kichirou's company was the moment she'd quit being a shinobi.

"Nostalgic for what?" he asked, bewildered. "You hate Kichirou."

Hamada never did understand sarcasm—he took things way too literally. She decided not to mention it, which was the key to ending conversations with him quickly. "Hated. Past tense," she said. "It's been four years since I've seen him, and Gou-san said he'd been asking after me."

Hamada stared at her. She stared back, unblinking.

He was the first to look away.

"… He's on a mission. He should be back next week. I'll tell him you were looking for him," he said. The scowl returned. "Now, get out. I don't want to see you here ever again."

Against her control, she felt a frown making its way onto her face. It wasn't fair; she'd trained years to have the perfect poker face, and all Hamada had to do was echo words he'd said from their childhood, and it was like she was an open book. She'd thought she was over it, but apparently, she wasn't.

It wasn't a good idea to come here. She'd have been better off just waiting until Monday to talk to Fuyuki.

"… That's good, because I don't want to be here ever again," she said, echoing her own words from back then. Hamada reeled back as if he'd been slapped.

Served him right.

As she turned to stalk away, she heard Fuyuki sigh. "You know, one of these days, you guys are going to have to work together. You should really try to get along, or it's going to bite both of you in the ass."

Her frown deepened. She hadn't done anything. Hamada was the one who needed to learn to hold his tongue. It was like her father always said: "A good Shinobi is one who is cloaked in both his appearance and his emotions."

A real enemy would be able to play Hamada's emotions like a fiddle. In all honesty, he'd probably die before they ever had to work together.

He wasn't her problem.

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* * *

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If you asked any old person on the street, they'd tell you that the only place in Kawamura worth visiting is Haruka's Bar, on the corner of Main and Pine. The place itself had been there as long as anyone could remember, and had stayed exactly the same down to its crooked shutters, even as the small trading town changing around it. If the building seemed strange in the way it never changed, then the employees were stranger—Lady Haruka, a one-eyed woman who surely had to be pushing ninety, had kept the same personnel for years, never once finding occasion to fire someone. This timelessness had been the focus of local gossip for years, whispered between friends and strangers with careful, uneasy gazes.

"It's just, she's been the same for _years_, surely it's some sort of genjutsu? Could she be one of _them_?" "Surely not, she's just a harmless old woman!" "But you can never be too sure these days..."

Still, even the fear of _them_ couldn't keep people away from the best food and drinks in town, and so Haruka's Bar remained the only place of interest in the curious little in between town of Kawamura. After all, there wasn't even a small bit of evidence that Lady Haruka could be involved with _them_, and hearsay was just that: hearsay.

Except, of course, when it wasn't.

The man who entered Haruka's at 6:34 on the dot went unnoticed by most in the bar. Those who heard the bell ring to signal someone's arrival looked up more out of instinct than anything else, but their eyes slid over the newcomer as if he wasn't even there.

This was probably for the best, because the man very clearly did not belong.

He was bird-like in appearance, with a large hooked nose and long, thin limbs that looked like they might snap at a small breeze. It seemed as though if one took their eyes off of him for even a small moment, he'd wither away into nothingness. Despite the man's frail appearance, there was something about the glare in his eyes, or perhaps it was the set of his brow, that marked him as a man you did not want to cross.

He moved as though he was gliding over the wooden floor. He made no noise—in fact, the world seemed to get quieter around him, as though nature itself was scared of him. He carried no weapons, and his clothing was too tight to conceal any armor, yet this man was undoubtedly one of _them_.

_A shinobi._


	8. Something

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: The Hokage assigns a mission.

Notes: I am so sorry about the ridiculous wait; I just haven't been able to access a desktop/laptop computer, and publishing chapters from mobile is just, like, 100% not going to happen. This chapter is also painfully short (its almost an interlude, and not a real chapter), also due to the whole "no computer to write on" thing. Again, I'm really sorry!

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Something

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Sarutobi Hiruzen watched Team Four enter the mission room to report another successful D-rank with a grin resembling the cat who got the canary. This mission would bring their total count to 26, a frankly impressive number when one considered that they'd only been a team for just about a week and a half. There was no person in Konoha, ninja or not, who could deny that Team Four was the most promising team of this year's bunch.

There was nothing the Hokage enjoyed more than proving the council wrong.

He'd been right in assuming the council would throw a fit when they discovered that he'd passed a fourth team, but the fit hadn't been for the reason he expected. He'd thought they might be upset with the break in tradition—the academy had only been allowed to pass a maximum of three teams ever since it'd been founded—but they'd taken that bit surprisingly well. No, the part they complained about had been _who_he'd passed, and not that he'd passed them at all.

They'd all piped up with their own suggestions on who he should've passed instead—all the members from minor clans in that class had been brought up at least once. "You can't just pass three nobodies," they'd said. "They'll only be a drain on our resources," they'd whined. And the fact that he'd chosen Mitarashi Anko to be their teacher had only incensed them further. The more audacious members had even gone so far as to start petitions to get _all_ the assignments redone.

The whole situation had given him one hell of a migraine, but proving the council wrong was so satisfying that it was worth it. It also helped that they weren't just proved wrong—if their opinion had been a solid object, it would have been thrown against the wall a couple dozen times, stepped on, ground into the earth, dug up, completely shattered, put back together, and then shattered again.

To say Team Four was doing well was a bit of an understatement.

Naruto's clone jutsu explained some of their productivity. Naruto had the largest chakra reserves that the Hokage had ever seen, even compared to past Jinchuuriki, and because of that, he could throw around shadow clones like they were nothing. It was fast becoming commonplace to see several Narutos running around collecting groceries, or searching for Tora, or walking dogs, or doing some other chore for a mission. But the team's success could not _all_ be attributed to Naruto. An important part of passing D-ranks was client approval ratings, and as sad as it was, Naruto couldn't possibly be responsible for their high marks, and as clever as the boy could sometimes be, the efficient way his clones went about collecting this and that for his missions was decidedly unlike him. No, Naruto was not the only factor in his team's success.

Ishida Fuyuki was well-liked amongst his peers. Reports from the academy listed him as "a charming, sociable boy with a natural gift for diplomacy." Clearly, his charisma extended even past others his age. There was little doubt that Team Four's high approval rating was his doing. Considering the unjust hatred the villagers had towards Naruto, his ability to turn others to his side was nothing short of incredible. Charisma like that could get the boy a long way, especially when it came time for his jōnin exams.

Meanwhile, Suzuki Setsuna was shaping up to be an excellent strategist, much like her father. He'd noticed that the two boys allowed her to choose their missions for them, and there was a very good reason for that. The girl seemed to have a good grasp on time management, and knew exactly which missions to pick so her team could continue to finish three missions a day. Her teammates were already deferring to her to make other decisions as well—even Naruto, who was notoriously hard-headed, hardly argued against her.

Naruto was the power, Ishida was the charisma, and Suzuki was the brain.

It reminded him a bit of another team, not so long ago... They even looked similar! But he'd better keep that to himself. He doubted Sparrow would find the implications of such a comparison amusing, no matter how accurate it was.

"That's their third mission today, and it's only two," sighed the chūnin in charge of mission assignments for the day. "The older teams have been complaining about all the missions being gone when they get here."

Umino Iruka, present at the mission assignment desk every day after classes let out, twitched. "Maybe they should get here sooner then. It's not Team Four's fault that the other teams are slow." This was the same conversation he'd had for the past three days with three different chūnin, and he was understandably annoyed.

"Yeah, but it's bloody annoying, it is. Satoshi's team is here to complain nearly every day. Hatake's team, too. That Hamada kid has a hell of a mouth on him, you know, and the pink haired brat is just as loud."

The Hokage tapped the ashes out of his pipe. That was potentially problematic. He knew Kakashi hadn't actually wanted to pass a team, especially not the one he was given, but he couldn't be allowed to fail the Uchiha. Kakashi was already annoyed with his team, and it would never get any better if they didn't get to complete many missions as a team. If they weren't ever forced to work together, they'd never understand the value of teamwork. Both Uchiha and Hamada needed to learn that lesson.

Perhaps he should get Team Four out of the village for a little bit. There weren't any long-term D-ranks, as such a thing was nearly unheard of, but he did have a couple of easy C-ranks he could assign. It was rare for a fresh genin team to be assigned a C-rank outside of war times, but he was sure this particular team could handle it.

"Team Four," he called out, just as they were preparing to take another mission. "How would you feel about taking a C-rank?"

Immediately, Naruto yelled, "A C-rank? Hell yeah! What kind of C-rank, old man? Are we gonna rescue a princess? Or maybe escort an emperor? Is that a possible C-rank, Fuyuki?"

Ishida laughed. "I don't think so. Things involving high ranking officials are typically B-rank, at a minimum. The ranking is higher if there's enemy shinobi to account for. Missions given a C-rank aren't s'posed to involve anything more dangerous than bandits."

Naruto pursed his lips, but nodded. "That makes sense, I guess." He then broke out in a bright grin. "In that case, old man, can we save a town from a bunch of bandits?"

The Hokage laughed. He could always trust Naruto to want to do the heroic thing. "Not this time, Naruto. There _is_a caravan that needs escorting, however."

They'd be able to handle it, he was sure. And if they couldn't, they had one of his finest jōnin to back them up.

"Eh? Hokage-sama, are you sure they're ready for a C-rank? They've only just graduated!" said Umino, a look of horror on his face. Unsurprising—the Hokage had expected him to complain.

"Aw, come on, Sensei!" yelled Naruto, flailing about in Umino's general direction. "We're real ninja now! We can handle anything the old man throws at us!"

"Probably not anything," interjected Suzuki. A slight bounce in her chakra was the only indication that she was amused. "We'd die on an S-rank, assuming the 's' was for interaction with dangerous shinobi, and not for political sensitivity."

"Eh?" said Naruto, scratching his head. "I thought mission rankings only went to A? Wouldn't an S-rank be super easy then? Is there a Q-rank? Or a Z?"

"S is the rank above A," explained Ishida. "S-rank missions are only given to the most experienced jōnin, and they're kinda rare, so we don't hear a lot about them. Missions can be given an S-rank if there's crazy amounts of danger, or if it's supposed to be super confidential, but most S-ranks are only labeled 'S' for political sensitivity—for example, a mission to make friends with a foreign country would be S-rank, even if there were no ninja in that country."

"Oh. Well, I'm gonna complete a bunch of S-ranks! Then they'll have to make me Hokage!"

"Sure, Uzumaki, follow your dreams," Suzuki deadpanned.

"I'll be right there with you!" Ishida grinned.

"Aww, look at my cute genin bonding!" cooed Mitarashi. She reached over and ruffled the boys' hair. "They grow up so fast!"

Hopefully he was making the right decision sending this team out... But he didn't have many doubts. Three nobodies or not, Team Mitarashi was certainly _something_.


	9. Reasonably Unreasonable

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Team Four prepares to leave the village. Setsuna continues to look for answers.

Notes: ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Still no computer. Save me from this hell.

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Reasonably Unreasonable

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"I can't believe we have a C-rank already!" said Fuyuki.

He thought about the things he could buy with his mission pay and began to feel giddy. He'd already replaced Ami's shoes—maybe next he could replace the window! Or he could buy books on medical ninjutsu! He'd read a few from the library, but they were always hard to get ahold of because of how expensive they were. Some struggling med student always had them checked out, and while Fuyuki _could _ask the librarian to put them aside for him as a favor, he knew he would feel guilty about it later. The librarian loved Fuyuki, but it wasn't right to take away valuable learning tools from someone who actually needed them when he was just learning medical ninjutsu casually.

Although, now that he was an official ninja, maybe it _wasn't _so casual.

Sensei never went easy on them. It wasn't that she was actively trying to kill them, but things definitely got a little dicey now and then. He and Setsuna got the worst of it; there was hardly ever a practice where he didn't come home looking like a pincushion. Naruto never seemed to have a problem, though, which was _crazy_, because Fuyuki knew he wasn't dodging all those needles. But that was beside the point—if training kept on like this, the ability to heal himself and his teammates would probably be a necessity.

"I believe it!" yelled Naruto. "We're the best genin team in all of Konoha!"

"I wouldn't go yelling things like that around here," said Setsuna. "You might offend someone."

"Huh? Why?" Naruto asked, looking genuinely confused.

"Because it sounds like you're saying other teams are incompetent, and no one likes to be called that."

"Well, then they should just get good," Naruto shrugged.

Sensei snorted, "You've got to get good first, kid. You still can't dodge everything I throw at you, and you get knocked on your ass every time you fight ice princess over here."

"Um, well...That's different!"

Sensei laughed. "Alright kid, whatever you say. It is pretty impressive we've got a C-rank already, but we shouldn't brag until we all come back. We'll look real foolish if one or more of us dies on this mission, and what's more, it'll also make me look bad. So, the first rule of our first C-rank is 'no dying', got it?"

"Yes, Sensei," the genin chorused.

"Okay, second rule: you three will follow my orders exactly, even if they sound silly. I am your commander, and that means you follow my lead. I will not tolerate insubordination. If any one of you so much as sets a toe out of line, I will have you do an entire week of just conditioning. No missions, no sparring, just sprints, push-ups, and poison," she paused, hand on hip, thinking. "I think that's it. Follow my orders, and don't die."

"That seems reasonable," said Setsuna, nodding. "How long will we be out of the village?"

"At least three weeks, so pack your bags accordingly. Meet me at the gates at six tonight—normally we'd wait until dawn tomorrow, but at our current team speed, we'd miss the rendezvous time, so we'll have to travel at night. Now," she clapped, "if you'll excuse me, I have some money to collect." Anko-sensei poofed away in a swirl of leaves, almost before she'd finished her sentence, leaving no room for questions.

Fuyuki blinked at the space his sensei had just occupied. "Huh. I guess you were right, Setsuna-chan: she's totally making bets on us."

"It's understandable. I'd probably do the same," she said, pressing herself against the wall as a chūnin came bustling by. "I find that I like having my own money."

"Yeah!" agreed Naruto. "It's awesome. Now I can buy four bowls of ramen instead of just two!"

Fuyuki laughed. "You oughta eat more than just ramen, Naruto-kun."

"If he wants to buy ramen every day, let him. It's his business if he wants to be 4'9 for the rest of his life."

"Eh?! Ramen makes you short?"

"Well it doesn't make you tall," Setsuna said. "But we can talk about poor dietary decisions later. Do you two remember how to pack for missions?"

"Of course," said Fuyuki. "We spent like a week on that."

"And you, Uzumaki-san?"

"Well, it can't be that hard, right?" Naruto laughed, ruffling his hair.

His nonchalant attitude fooled exactly no one. Setsuna stared at him blankly. He stared back. Fuyuki fidgeted. He supposed that blank staring was a good method to get points across to Naruto, but it was always awkward. Finally, Setsuna sighed. "... You missed that class, correct?"

"Um, yeah," said Naruto, rubbing the back of his head embarrassedly. "How'd you know?"

"You usually left at lunch," said Setsuna. "It was covered in our afternoon classes."

"No worries, Naruto-kun! I can make you a checklist. I just need paper…"

"I have some," said Setsuna, digging in her bag and pulling out a navy-blue notebook. The notebook looked like it had seen better days—some pages were dog eared and some looked like they had fallen out and been taped back in. Setsuna flipped to a blank page somewhere in the middle of the book, and Fuyuki got a glance at some of her notes. It looked to be some kind of extensive mathematical formula, and the few words that were there looked like they were written in code. Setsuna caught him looking and pointed at what appeared to be an odd squiggle. "It's a storage seal—modified Kiri standard. Kiri's seal is better at keeping out moisture, but it holds less, and the items you put in it can't be bigger than the paper. Konoha seals are the opposite—they're less sturdy but they hold more. My dad made this design. Instead of being written based on just the yin-yang system, the center is in elemental format, and the outside is yin-yang. Usually seals don't have more than one type of formatting, but my dad figured out how to bridge them," she said, pointing at a formula that was circled. "This is a Suzuki figure."

"I thought seals were like pictures," Naruto said, scratching his head. "That looks like math."

"It is math," she shrugged. "All seals can be expanded to look like this, but when they're condensed, they take on whatever appearance you map out with your chakra. The only reason the seals you buy are uniform is for brand recognition—really, an explosive seal could be formed to look like a cat and it wouldn't lose its effectiveness at all."

"Seriously?" said Fuyuki. "I didn't know that!"

"It's not explicitly covered in class," Setsuna shrugged. "They just tell you not to use someone else's seals, or seals purchased off-brand. In the Second War, the Legendary Sannin killed a lot of people that way." Setsuna handed Fuyuki the paper she'd been holding and a pen from her bag. "You should get started on that list. You guys still have to tell—" Setsuna glanced at Naruto and appeared to change what she was going to say. She cleared her throat. "You have to pack too."

"Right!" said Fuyuki. "We should hurry up—Sensei said to meet her at six, and I bet if we show up late she'll count it as breaking the rules. I don't really want to do a whole week of conditioning…"

"Same," said Setsuna. "I think I would probably die."

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While Uzumaki and Fuyuki took off across the village, Setsuna made her way three floors down.

Her dad worked in the Hokage's tower, handling mission requests from inside the land of fire and correspondence from the villages outside of it. He described it as a bit like working for a library—the village needed to keep record of every mission they ever assigned and every treaty they formed for financial reasons, and it was her dad's job to make sure all those messages got put in the right place. Sometimes, that place was "on the village council's desk to be approved" and other times it was "in the archives, probably never to be touched again".

To Setsuna, that sounded horribly boring, but then, she found most forms of cleaning and organizing to be tedious. Her mother was the same way; she didn't like doing tasks unless there was a clear benefit. For example, neither woman minded doing the laundry, because that way they wouldn't smell, but both were prone to leaving their paperwork in large piles, because they didn't see a reason to put it all in separate binders—they knew exactly where everything they needed was: in the pile. Her dad was the opposite; he loved organizing things. Every bookcase in their house was in alphabetical order, and all the mail that had ever landed on their doorstep was filed and put away neatly—even the birthday cards and other various letters from her mom's family.

So he probably liked working in the tower, even if it wasn't cool.

Setsuna slid into the empty lobby and up to the receptionist's desk with all the grace she could manage, even going so far as to muffle her footsteps with chakra. Still, the receptionist, a retired shinobi named Soma, looked up as she approached the desk.

It was something of a game between the two, to see if Setsuna could sneak up on him.

As a child, she had spent a lot of time in this lobby, waiting for her classes to start. Soma had been the receptionist for as long as she could remember. He was paralyzed from the waist down, and so he never left the village on missions, as even her dad occasionally did. Therefore, he was there whenever Setsuna was.

Even as a child, Setsuna was exceptionally quiet, so she was used to startling most adults whenever she entered a room. Granted, that was probably because she'd only really spent time with her mother's friends, and they were civilians. Still, it had annoyed her that she couldn't ever escape Soma's notice.

Mostly because Setsuna had an insatiable sweet tooth, and she couldn't sneak the candy off his desk if he knew she was there.

So she did what every aspiring shinobi would have done—she made it her goal to try to steal as much candy as possible. That was less frequent these days, because she wasn't there every morning, but she still occasionally stopped by to have lunch with her dad. Soma had caught on fast, and had started keeping track of the score on a whiteboard on his desk. Of course, that meant that Setsuna had to tell him whenever she succeeded, but that was probably part of the reason why he'd done it. He likely didn't want to get in trouble for letting Shou's kid gorge herself on candy.

"Good afternoon, Suna-chan. I heard you've been breaking records left and right with that new headband of yours," he said, reaching out and tapping her on the forehead with his pen.

"Hello, Soma-san," she said, waving him away so she could pick up a marker and add a point to Soma's side. He was winning by a significant amount, and she was beginning to suspect that some, if not all, of the points on her side were unearned. "I haven't been setting any records, my team has. We work well together."

"Oh? That's good," Soma chuckled. "My team didn't start getting along until long after we'd all made chūnin. But then, your dad got along well with his team from the get go; probably it's your family's luck kicking in." He paused, twirling his pen over his fingers with great dexterity. "Uzumaki-san isn't causing you any problems?"

And there it was again. Why was it that every adult she knew wanted to know how Uzumaki behaved? No one ever wanted to hear about Fuyuki, and she would've thought he was the one most likely to cause her problems, thanks to his friendship with Hamada.

And since when did adults pay attention to academy students, especially orphans, enough to recognize them by name, anyways?

It just didn't make sense.

Fuyuki hadn't had any answers, but then, he was about as experienced as she was. Soma, on the other hand, had been a ninja probably as long as the Third Hokage had. Maybe she could get something out of him.

"Why does everyone want to know how Naruto-kun behaves?" she asked, watching Soma carefully for any reaction.

"Naruto-_kun_?" he questioned, eyebrow raised. "Are you that close? The only peer of yours I've heard you address in such a way is Yamanaka-chan, and even then, it took you months to do so."

Soma was too experienced to show his emotions openly, but Setsuna thought she read a hint of horror from his chakra. He didn't approve of friendship between her and Uzumaki, even though she knew from prior conversations that he was a firm supporter of family-like relationships between squadmates.

"Naruto-kun is nice. He's a fast learner, and is surprisingly skilled with complex techniques. Why does everyone want to know how he behaves?" she asked again, undeterred.

Soma stared at her for a long moment, but she didn't look away. Setsuna was the master of staring contests. Finally, Soma sighed, futzing about with the wheels on his wheelchair, as was his typical nervous habit.

"He's dangerous," he said, carefully. "You should keep your distance."

Uzumaki, dangerous? That was a new one. Setsuna had heard a lot of negative things about Naruto—he was rude, disrespectful, an idiot—but she had never heard anyone call him _dangerous_. If people were truly afraid of him, they wouldn't treat him like they did. There was distrust, and a hell of a lot of anger, but she didn't think people were afraid of him.

"How is he dangerous?" she asked.

Soma grunted. "He just is, okay? Trust me, you need to leave him be."

"If you don't provide evidence, then it's just hearsay. From my firsthand experience, Naruto-kun has showed no signs of being anything other than a loyal shinobi of Konoha. He's no more dangerous to me than any of my other peers."

"I know I don't look it, but I am a jōnin," Soma said, a hint of anger apparent in his voice. "I think I would know better than you who is and isn't a threat."

Setsuna opened her mouth to fire back with a strong retort, but held herself back. She did, in fact, still need something from him. Sometimes, you had to pick your battles.

"Okay," she said, nodding decisively. "I'll be cautious."

Soma nodded, leaning back in his chair, satisfied with her response. "I doubt you came in here just for candy," he said.

She hummed. "Well, you never know. I do love butterscotch."

He snorted, gesturing to the jar of sweets. "Help yourself, brat."

"Thanks, Soma-san; you're the best." Setsuna grabbed a handful, putting them in the pocket of her hoodie. She'd be sure to share some with her team—_all _of her team.

"Yeah, yeah, cut the shit. What do you want?"

She hummed, bouncing back on her heels. "Can you tell my dad I'm here? I need to talk to him before four, but it's not urgent."

Four was the latest she could get away with waiting. There were still some things she needed to pack, even though she'd had a mission bag mostly ready since her team had passed the second exam.

(Although, they hadn't really _passed_ anything, so much as they had stumbled into a lucky break. If Mitarashi-sensei had tested them on the first day, they probably would have failed. Setsuna was horribly slow, Fuyuki couldn't take a hit, and Naruto was an all-around disaster. They'd only just started remedying that, but it was going to take a long time for them to truly get up to snuff. For now, they were getting by due to excellent teamwork, but that could only take them so far. They each had to get stronger individually before they could stand on their own easily enough to make chūnin.)

She still needed to throw in some ration bars, for one. She hadn't packed those beforehand because she didn't expect a C-rank so soon. She also had to tell her mom that she was leaving, and how long she'd be gone for. It wouldn't be polite to just up and disappear without a word.

And then there was the whole "the village gate is on the other side of town from her house" thing. Setsuna, as she mentioned before, was horribly slow.

"Sure thing," said Soma, scribbling a quick note and using a small transportation seal to send it. It was easier than trying to find her dad in the sprawling expanse of the archives, but it was also less efficient—the message would go to her dad's desk, but he might not be there for a while, considering all the filing he had to do. "What're you doing at four?"

"I'm going on a C-rank," she said. "I want to tell him in person, just in case, you know?"

"Are you worried?" asked Soma. "That's not like you at all. I'd have thought you'd be raring to go."

"I am raring to go," said Setsuna, monotonous. "I just think I should let him know."

"Ah, well, true enough," Soma said, nodding. "Why don't you sit down; we got some new books in the other day—there's one of those trashy romance novels you love to laugh at."

"Lovely."

Unless she was incredibly lucky, she'd probably be waiting a while. She thought, vaguely, that she should probably use the time to do something productive, but then, she did love to waste time. She picked up the trashy novel and began to read.


	10. Tension

Title: Into the Smoke

Summary: Fuyuki visits the Hamada compound, Setsuna is easily bribed, and Naruto is perceptive.

Notes: I was going through a period of very low self esteem when I got a series of very rude reviews on this story about a year ago, which I guess explains the _extreme_ delay in posting. Sorry. Hope this chapter doesn't disappoint—I'm a little rusty.

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Tension

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Fuyuki left his house with a skip in his step. He couldn't quite get his bag to close all the way, but he didn't really mind. He was going on a C-rank! Out of the village! Ami wasn't home, which was a little disappointing, so he'd left her a note on the refrigerator door, but she'd be super excited for him too when she found out! Maybe she'd even buy him a cake or something!

He thought about going to find her—she was probably still at the academy—but he was supposed to meet up with Touya in a half an hour. Touya would probably be super bitter, but it would be worse if Fuyuki just didn't show up. Inevitably, his visit was going to be spent mostly just listening to Touya complain about his team, but Fuyuki didn't mind that so much. Touya could be an ass sometimes, but Fuyuki knew that if he ever needed something, Touya would do it without question.

Touya lived all the way across town, in a district that was closed off with a secondary set of walls. Inside the Hamada district was like a whole other village—there were shops and restaurants and even some farms. Touya had always hated that it was so closed off and out of the way—he said it was like his family wasn't even welcome in the _proper _village.

Fuyuki, on the other hand, thought it was kind of neat. All of Touya's family was in the same place, and there was enough of them to fill an entire district! Growing up next to your aunts, uncles, and cousins sounded like it would be so warm and inviting! The neighborhood Fuyuki lived in could be kind of cold… Atsuchi, the homeless man who lived behind his apartment, would probably have an actual place to stay if they were all family…

But then, who knows? Maybe living next to an aunt is like the same thing as living next to a stranger when your family is that big.

Setsuna lived over this way, too, secluded in the thick woods. She'd probably climbed a lot of trees as a kid, much like Fuyuki used to climb fire escapes. On one memorable occasion, he'd climbed all the way onto a roof and fallen off, only for a police officer to swoop in and catch him. Out here, there probably weren't many patrols, even when the Uchiha _were_ around. He wondered if Setsuna had ever fallen from a tree, and if so, if someone had been there to catch her.

"Gou-san!" Fuyuki called out as he approached the gate. "How are you?"

Gou sighed, placing his book down and crinkling his nose. "Back again?"

"Yup!" he said, bouncing on his heels. "Is Touya in?"

Gou narrowed his eyes at Fuyuki's bag, scowling towards him. "You're not staying the night, are you?" he asked, deliberately not answering his question.

Gou was always like that, but Fuyuki pretended not to notice. Gou was a lot like Touya in that he was kind of an asshole, but he was sure they could be friends if he was nice enough!

"No, I'm heading out of town for a mission after this!" he said, smiling widely.

Gou looked at him suspiciously. "What kind of D-rank happens outside the village?"

"Well, historically—" Fuyuki cut himself off. He doubted Gou would appreciate the little history lesson. "I mean, I'm going on a C-rank."

Gou looked taken aback. "A C-rank? So soon?"

"Yep! I think some of the other teams were probably upset that we kept taking the good missions, so he Hokage gave us a C-rank to get us out of the village."

Gou grunted. "Right. Setsuna's probably pulling all the weight. Try not to get her killed."

Eh? That was kind of out of nowhere. He had no idea Gou even knew Setsuna, although that would explain why she was allowed in last weekend without an invitation.

"I'll try?" he said. "Although I don't really think I have to worry about it. Our sensei's first rule for this mission is 'don't die' and Setsuna-chan takes rules pretty seriously."

"Alright," he huffed. He seemed like he was done talking for the day, eager to get Fuyuki out of his way. "Touya is home; you can go in."

Fuyuki grinned. "Thanks, Gou-san!"

He ran past him into the compound, rounding the corner onto Touya's street and bounding up his stairs. He rang the doorbell and listened to it chime through the empty rooms. He didn't have to wait long for the door to swing open—Touya had been waiting for him.

Immediately, Touya spotted his bag. "Where are you going? Did Ami kick you out?"

"Huh? Why would she do that?"

"I don't know. Did you track mud through the halls?"

"No, but even if I did the most she would do is make me clean it up."

Touya shrugged, but he didn't look convinced. "Did you bring home a stray dog?"

Fuyuki laughed. "Ami didn't kick me out!"

"Then what's with the bag? My mother won't want you to spend the night, but I could probably hide you in the closet if you were really determined."

"Good to know, but no." Fuyuki tapped his toe against the ground and tried to break the news as gently as possible. "I've got a C-rank."

"A what."

"Um, it's not a big one or anything," he said, waving his hands. "It's going to be super simple, and we should only be gone for like at most a week and a half and I mean it'll probably be super unfun anyways since it's just going to be me and my team and—"

"Fuyuki."

Fuyuki fidgeted, pulling at the sleeves of his favorite green sweater. "Yes?"

Touya's lips were pursed and his nose was crinkled like he was angry, but he took a deep breath and the annoyance faded. "Your bag is a mess," he said. "Unsurprising, considering that you were the one to pack it."

"Eh? I didn't think it was that bad," he said, craning over his shoulder to look at it. Sure, it didn't close all the way, but it wasn't likely to pop open or anything. It would be fine (probably)!

"Come in. I'll fix it for you." He turned heel and strode down the hallway without waiting for a response. Fuyuki followed. It wasn't often that Touya actually invited him in—usually, he had to duck around him and invite himself in.

Touya's room was the same as always—not a single thing was out of place. His desk chair was even pushed in!

Fuyuki promptly flopped face down onto the floor, spreading out on the hardwood beside his backpack. Touya nudged him with his foot.

"Why?"

"I thought you would be mad," said Fuyuki. "I prepared a speech and everything."

"I am mad," he said, beginning to pull things from Fuyuki's bag. "It should have been you and I on a team with someone else who doesn't suck." He paused to think. "Ino, maybe. Instead, I'm stuck with Uchiha and Haruno, who by the way can't even handle a simple pet retrieval mission, and you're stuck with Suzuki and Uzumaki, who are probably just dragging you down. If we were together, I bet we would have been doing C's last weekend."

Fuyuki hummed. "They're not so bad," he said, even though it was kind of a lost cause at this point. It would take a miracle to get Touya to see Setsuna as anything better than an enemy, and Naruto as more than the deadlast.

Touya scoffed. "Sure." He was silent for a moment, sorting things into piles. "You know, I think the only good team the come out of this year was Team Eight. They're probably having a ball."

"I wish I was on a team with Kiba," Fuyuki sighed. Shino and Hinata were super lucky. They got to see Akamaru all the time, and were probably even allowed to pet him.

"No you don't," Touya stated. "You would die."

"Maybe I wouldn't! You never know!"

"I'm reasonably sure."

"I took a dog walking mission last week and didn't die!"

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Touya sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "You're a mess."

"Dogs are great!"

"A _mess._"

Somehow, in less than a half an hour, Touya had gotten Fuyuki's bag to defy the laws of space. Before, the bag had been overflowing with stuff, but now it was hardly full at all. Clearly, he'd used some sort of ninja tomfoolery, but Fuyuki didn't know where, when, or how.

"You cheated," said Fuyuki, eyeing the bag.

"What? How did I cheat?" he asked, sitting cross legged on the floor across from him. "You can't cheat at packing."

"Well, clearly you did. There's no way you fit everything in there."

"Not everyone is as horrible at organizing as you are. A toddler could have done it better than you did."

Fuyuki grinned and twirled his braid around his finger, turning his head sideways and winking. "A toddler isn't as stunningly handsome—" Touya threw a ration bar at him, causing him to duck out of the way with a laugh.

"You're ridiculous," he said, but he couldn't quite keep a straight face.

From Touya's doorway, someone cleared their throat. Fuyuki nearly jumped out of his skin, immediately sitting up straighter and attempting (unsuccessfully) to smooth the wrinkles on his sweater. "Hamada-san!"

She wasn't supposed to be home until seven, an hour after Fuyuki would have left the village. Why was she there now?

Hamada Haruna was a strict, domineering woman. She carried herself in a forceful, militant manner—her posture never seemed to droop, and her shoulders were broad and strong. She was tall, made taller by high heeled boots, which never made a sound unless she wanted them to. Her features were sharp and angular, much like Touya's, but there was a hardness to her forest green eyes that just didn't exist in his.

"Why are you here?" she asked, eyes unblinking, smiling fixedly. Even though she was smiling, Fuyuki knew that she was horribly angry.

Technically, Fuyuki wasn't supposed to be here. She'd told him around six months ago that he wasn't allowed to come by anymore. She'd tolerated him in the beginning because Touya had told her that Fuyuki needed tutoring, and he had offered to help, but come Touya's senior year she'd said that he needed to focus more on his own education.

Personally, Fuyuki thought it had to do with Ami. He hadn't missed her reaction when he'd mentioned her. There was bad blood there, for sure, but Ami refused to elaborate, and Fuyuki wasn't about to ask Haruna.

"He needed help packing his bag," said Touya, almost literally shrinking.

Fuyuki _hated_ that.

Most of Touya's confidence was only an act, sure, but whatever he did have seemed to get sucked out of him whenever his mom was around. She was garbage. A horrible woman. Literally belonged in the trash. He would fight her, physically and verbally, if he didn't think that she would take it out on Touya if she lost.

"Oh?" she asked, smooth as silk but threaded with venom. "Where is he going?"

"He has a—"

"—Training trip," Fuyuki said. He could imagine her reaction if she found out that he was going on a C-rank, but not Touya. She would throw a fit. "With my team. We need to get stronger."

She eyed him up and down, scoffing. "I can see that. Get out of my house, Ishida, and stay gone. You're not wanted here."

Fuyuki scowled, but rose to his feet regardless. He took a deep breath and cleared his face of any anger before turning to Touya, his customary grin in place. "See you later, Touya-kun! Don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone!"

He would get out of the house, but if Haruna thought he would stay gone, she was horribly mistaken.

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* * *

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_He waited outside of her window for the lights in her parents' room to go out. As soon as they did, he scaled the old oak tree in her backyard, heart pounding, aware that he shouldn't be there. Her blinds weren't closed, and so his view into the room was unobstructed. Hana, unaware of her silent observer, was going about preparing for her night's sleep. She didn't turn her onyx gaze towards the window, so Ken took a moment just to look._

_It was interesting to see her like this—like she was a fish in a bowl, or a girl on TV._

God, what a creep. Hana would be better off with a literal fish than with Ken, but they were clearly going to end up together, just because that was the genre. Still, Setsuna didn't have to like it. She'd definitely tell Ino to pick up a copy of this book so they could trash it together. Ino would get a kick out of the chapter prior to this one, where Hana is trying on wedding dresses that are all very poorly described.

The door to the lounge clicked open, but it was only the secretary from upstairs who entered, walking right past Soma without even acknowledging him. The secretary was rude to everyone, so Soma was probably lucky she didn't stop to chat. She pushed open the door to the archives, easily dodging out of the way of a familiar face on the way out without even looking up from the file she was reading.

Setsuna hopped to her feet as her dad came through the door. "Hi Dad, sorry to bother you at work."

"Don't worry about it; I could use the break anyways," he said, smiling. "What do you need?"

"I just wanted to let you know that I'm heading out of town for a little—I have a C-rank."

For a second, Setsuna thought her dad looked surprised, but it quickly faded into his usual blank expression.

"A C-rank? Already?" he asked. "Are you already packed?"

"Yeah, mostly, I've just got a couple things to throw in my bag, and I still have to tell Mom."

"Let me walk with you," he said. "What time do you need to be at the gate?"

"I need to be there at six. Don't you have work, though?"

"I can take a break," he said nodding decisively. "I'll walk you to the gate too; I'd like the chance to meet your team, however briefly."

Yes! Setsuna loved walking with her dad! Well, actually she just liked spending time with him. He was usually pretty busy, so any time she could get with him was immensely valuable to her. Sometimes he would tell her cool stories about his old team, which was nice, but Setsuna liked it better on the rare occasions that he would show her a new seal. They were always super easy, almost _too _easy for her, but she liked learning them anyways. Maybe now that she was a genin, he would show her how to do something a little cooler than make a thermometer.

But, would it bother Uzumaki if her dad came to see her off? He didn't have any family to see him off, after all…

"What are you thinking about?" her dad asked as she fell into step slightly behind him. "You went from ecstatic to worried very quickly."

"You could tell that?" Of course he could. No matter how good she was at hiding her emotions, her dad always seemed to be able to read her. "I was thinking about Uzumaki-san. He doesn't have anyone to walk him to the gate."

"I see. You think he might be jealous?"

"Mmm, not quite. He doesn't really seem like the jealous type. I was thinking more that it would sting a bit."

"Maybe," he hummed, but he sounded unconvinced.

"You don't think so?"

"Uzumaki-san doesn't seem like the type to get caught up on that sort of thing."

Well, that sounded like a layered statement. It was something about his tone, some minute difference, that had her picking apart his statement like she was a scientist in a lab.

Was that a vague insult? Setsuna looked at her dad, but his face gave nothing away. Now that she thought about it, her parents had asked about Uzumaki much in the way that Soma had. Did the weird mistrust of Uzumaki extend to her family too? Her mom had seemed okay with him. Maybe she was reading too far into it.

But then again, maybe she wasn't. Everything surrounding Uzumaki seemed to be complicated—her dad's opinion of him was probably no different. Inwardly, she scowled. Her dad was about as likely to give her a straight answer on this than anyone else. He would just talk around her in riddles and she would come away with zero answers. Again.

What was it about Uzumaki that had everyone tight lipped?

"Are you saying he's stupid?" she asked, just a tad irritated. "Too simple to have normal human emotions? Or are you just saying that so I won't feel bad about doing something that could potentially hurt him?"

Her dad gazed at her, his brown eyes piercing, seeming to read her every thought.

"Touched on a sore spot, huh? That wasn't my intention."

"To call him stupid or to set me off?"

"Both," he paused, apparently searching for words. "I knew someone very similar to Uzumaki-san, a while back. She possessed a great deal of mental fortitude, and it is my understanding that Uzumaki-san is the same way. He's lived a harsh life, and to be as cheerful as he so often is, he must have become accustomed to brushing the small things off. I don't think he'll even blink a lash if you or Ishida-san showed up with family."

That reeked of a half-truth. What was the whole story? Who was the mysterious woman and why were the two connected in her dad's brain? Maybe that wasn't the important part. As far as Setsuna knew, her dad had only ever seen Uzumaki in passing. To have an actual opinion about him, he must have had more interaction with him than Setsuna knew about.

"When did you meet Uzumaki-san?" she asked. "You weren't home the night he was over."

"We've met in passing," he said, which also reeked of a half-truth, though she couldn't pinpoint why. "Why is Uzumaki-san such an issue to you?"

"Because we're teammates," she said. "People are weird around him."

Her dad didn't offer an answer to that. They walked in silence for a few moments.

"... How would you like to learn how to make a simple storage seal?"

Tempting. As much as Setsuna wanted to keep pushing the Uzumaki issue, she didn't really want to fight with her dad right before she left town. An argument was clearly where they were headed—her dad didn't want to talk about Uzumaki, and she didn't want to let it drop. A storage seal, though. It would be nice to know how to make her own, and she could always ask about Uzumaki later.

"...I'd like that."

.

* * *

.

Naruto was the first of Team Four to reach the gate.

He came barreling down the street, sure that he was late, but when he looked at the clock, it showed he was half an hour early.

"No way!" he said, waving his limbs erratically. "I totally thought I was gonna be late!"

The list of items Fuyuki had given him was like crazy long, so he'd thought it was going to take a super long time. He'd practically flung everything in his bag!

'_But_,' he thought, vibrating with excitement, '_I have a C-rank! And Sasuke is probably still doing chores!_' He laughed gleefully, thinking about what Sasuke's face would be like when he heard the news. So much for deadlast, huh?

What was he going to do with thirty minutes, though?

Well, he supposed he could repack his bag… It didn't really zip all the way, and some of his stuff was sort of popping out, but then, there was the little setback that he didn't actually know how to make it better.

He'd never packed an overnight bag before, because he'd never had a place to spend the night. Like, he knew how to fold clothes and stuff, but how did you make them all fit? Fuyuki had said to pack at least five different sets of clothes because there weren't any washing machines in the woods, but all of his clothes were sort of bulky, because they had built in armor to slow down kunai and stuff.

And then there was the other stuff! Ration bars and extra kunai and bandages and a blanket—way too much stuff! He doubted that even Setsu, who'd probably been to loads of sleepovers, would be able to fit everything into one bag.

But it seemed like Fuyuki had managed it. He came around the corner with a singular backpack, which didn't look half as full as Naruto's.

"Hey! How'd you do that!" he said, running up and pointing at the boy's neatly packed bag. "There's so much stuff you said to bring! No way you fit it all in there!"

"Oh, uh, I had Touya-kun help me," said Fuyuki, laughing a little. "I'm not a very neat person, you know? He put some stuff in a storage scroll, I think? And then like, he put different types of stuff in different pockets, like my rations are all in this front pocket."

Naruto groaned. "Sensei is going to think I'm so dumb!"

"I doubt it," Fuyuki laughed. "She'll think you're messy, at most, but then, so am I."

Naruto pouted, "I'm not messy though! My apartment is super clean!"

He blinked. A thought had just struck him. "Hey, how come you're so early? Like, I'm early cuz I thought I had to rush, but you're a lot smarter when it comes to timing."

Fuyuki shrugged. "I'm excited! Also, Touya's mom came home early, so I couldn't hang out longer."

"Huh, why's that? Is she mean?" Naruto was pretty sure that Touya was the green haired guy on Sasuke's team, but he'd never actually asked his name before. Like Setsu, Touya was part of a clique that Naruto had rarely interacted with.

Fuyuki shrugged again. "She's strict. She also, like, hates Ami or something. I don't know why, but I guess it goes back to before I even met Touya?"

"Oh. Ami's, like, your sister, right?"

"Yeah!" he nodded. "You should come over sometime! I bet she'd love you!"

Naruto felt his heart jump to his throat. Setsu's mom had liked him, but then, that could have just been a fluke. She wasn't a ninja, and she seemed sort of foreign, so she maybe just didn't know about the kyuubi...

"... Am I late?"

Naruto jumped. "Setsu-chan! I didn't see you!"

She, too, had a very neatly packed bag. She was also walking with someone—tall, dark haired, and vaguely familiar. Naruto squinted. Had they met before?

"Mmm, you seemed pretty lost in thought." She paused briefly, adjusting one of her shoulder straps. "This is my dad. Dad, these are my teammates, Uzumaki Naruto and Ishida Fuyuki."

Her dad? But Naruto had definitely seen him before. Or maybe it was just that he was about as generic as Setsu, so he just _seemed_ familiar. The only thing he had that made him different from the other run of the mill dudes Naruto had seen was the blue scarf around his waist.

He squinted, then his eyes widened.

"Oh! You're the guy who told me how to fix my door!"

Setsu's dad didn't even twitch. Maybe it wasn't him after all?

"Or, at least, I think you are," Naruto continued. He looked between Setsu and the guy, silently pleading for help. "I mean, you have a useless waist scarf?"

Maybe it was Naruto's imagination, but the guy seemed to twitch.

"... It's not useless."

"Really?" Naruto stared incredulously at the scarf. He supposed it _could _have secret pockets or something, but honestly it just looked dumb. "What does it do?"

He didn't answer, which Naruto took to mean that the guy didn't have an answer.

This, too, might've been his imagination, but Setsu seemed almost amused.

"Yes," she said. "You can't go wrong using useless waist scarfs as a way to identify people. Are you the guy who told him how to fix his door, Dad?"

There was a long pause. "...Yes."

Fuyuki burst into laughter. "Oh my god. Naruto, you can't just wreck a man's life like that."

Was that insulting? Shit, he would never like him now! Setsu's mom would probably change her mind about him too!

"I didn't mean to!" he said, waving his arms around. "I'm sorry, Setsu-chan's dad! Your scarf is super cool and probably super useful!" He banged his fist into his palm. "Mmm! Definitely useful! You could strangle someone with it probably!"

"If you don't relax he'll probably strangle _you _with it," Setsu said.

Before Naruto even had a chance to be afraid, Setsu's dad said: "I'd never strangle you with my scarf."

There was a sudden poof, the kind that typically accompanied his sensei's arrival. "Strangle who with your scarf?"

"Naruto," answered Fuyuki. "Hello, Sensei!"

She waved, then turned to Setsu's dad.

"Why are you threatening to strangle my cute little genin with your useless scarf?"

He seemed to twitch again. "Hello, Mitarashi-san. It's good to see you."

"Well, obviously," she said, striking an exaggerated pose. "I'm always a sight for sore eyes."

"Sure," he said, deadpan.

Fuyuki snickered, but was silenced by a glare sent his way by Sensei.

"But I _will_ probably fight you if you come after this sweet, sweet boy," she said, pulling Naruto into an almost painfully tight side hug and ruffling his hair.

"Only probably?" said Setsu. "That's very reassuring."

"I'm glad you're reassured. I, the mighty and powerful Mitarashi Anko, aim to please."

"That's great, Mitarashi-san. I trust that my daughter is in capable hands."

"But if she gets hurt you'll come after me blah blah blah, yada yada yada. Got it," she said, releasing Naruto to wave him off. "We're only doing the Kobayashi mission. Simple stuff, very boring and regulated. Escort the caravan and try not to fall asleep from boredom. A real snoozefest. My adorable students could do this mission even if they were Hatake's brats."

Setsu's dad gave the impression of raising an eyebrow even though his face didn't move at all, which was honestly pretty impressive. "I have full faith in their capabilities."

"But as a father you have to worry. Yeah, yeah, I got it," she said, rolling her eyes.

"... No. I'm just here to assure that Setsuna is on time. She tends to run late."

"Rude," said Setsu. "And also not true. I would rather be buried in eighteen pounds of grass than be late."

"I'm sure you would, sunshine," he said. "Now that you're here with your team, I think I should get back to work."

"Have fun," said Setsu. Almost before she finished, he had poofed away.

Sensei clicked her tongue. "Not one for small talk, huh?"

"He's easily overwhelmed by social interaction," said Setsuna. "Like a very small, easily terrified bird."

For some reason, Sensei thought that was very funny. Naruto was mostly just confused. Had he missed something? He thought that Sensei was making really weird motions with her hands—maybe they were talking in code or something?

Weird people. Really weird people.

But who cared! Now that Sensei was here, they could leave! Out of the village! Naruto had never been outside the walls before—maybe they'd run into bandits, and then he could save the day!


End file.
